1WALL(1) User Commands WALL(1)
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6 wall - write a message to all users
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9 wall [-n] [-t timeout] [-g group] [message | file]
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12 wall displays a message, or the contents of a file, or otherwise its
13 standard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users. The
14 command will wrap lines that are longer than 79 characters. Short lines
15 are whitespace padded to have 79 characters. The command will always
16 put a carriage return and new line at the end of each line.
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18 Only the superuser can write on the terminals of users who have chosen
19 to deny messages or are using a program which automatically denies
20 messages.
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22 Reading from a file is refused when the invoker is not superuser and
23 the program is set-user-ID or set-group-ID.
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26 -n, --nobanner
27 Suppress the banner.
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29 -t, --timeout timeout
30 Abandon the write attempt to the terminals after timeout seconds.
31 This timeout must be a positive integer. The default value is 300
32 seconds, which is a legacy from the time when people ran terminals
33 over modem lines.
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35 -g, --group group
36 Limit printing message to members of group defined as a group
37 argument. The argument can be group name or GID.
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39 -h, --help
40 Display help text and exit.
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42 -V, --version
43 Print version and exit.
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46 Some sessions, such as wdm(1x), that have in the beginning of utmp(5)
47 ut_type data a ':' character will not get the message from wall. This
48 is done to avoid write errors.
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51 A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
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54 mesg(1), talk(1), write(1), shutdown(8)
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57 For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
58 https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
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61 The wall command is part of the util-linux package which can be
62 downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
63 <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
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67util-linux 2.38 2022-02-17 WALL(1)