1WALL(1)                          User Commands                         WALL(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       wall - write a message to all users
7

SYNOPSIS

9       wall [-n] [-t timeout] [-g group] [message | file]
10

DESCRIPTION

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.
17
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.
21
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.
24

OPTIONS

26       -n, --nobanner
27           Suppress the banner.
28
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.
34
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.
38
39       -h, --help
40           Display help text and exit.
41
42       -V, --version
43           Print version and exit.
44

NOTES

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.
49

HISTORY

51       A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
52

SEE ALSO

54       mesg(1), talk(1), write(1), shutdown(8)
55

REPORTING BUGS

57       For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
58       https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
59

AVAILABILITY

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/>.
64
65
66
67util-linux 2.39.2                 2023-06-14                           WALL(1)
Impressum