WALL(1)                                                            User Commands                                                           WALL(1)

NAME

       wall - write a message to all users

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       wall  displays  a  message,  or the contents of a file, or otherwise its standard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users.
       The command will wrap lines that are longer than 79 characters.  Short lines are whitespace padded to have 79 characters.  The command will
       always put a carriage return and new line at the end of each line.

       Only  the  superuser can write on the terminals of users who have chosen to deny messages or are using a program which automatically denies
       messages.

       Reading from a file is refused when the invoker is not superuser and the program is set-user-ID or set-group-ID.

OPTIONS

       -n, --nobanner
              Suppress the banner.

       -t, --timeout timeout
              Abandon the write attempt to the terminals after timeout seconds.  This timeout must be a positive integer.  The  default  value  is
              300 seconds, which is a legacy from the time when people ran terminals over modem lines.

       -g, --group group
              Limit printing message to members of group defined as a group argument.  The argument can be group name or GID.

       -V, --version
              Display version information and exit.

       -h, --help
              Display help text and exit.

NOTES

       Some sessions, such as wdm, that have in the beginning of utmp(5) ut_type data a ':' character will not get the message from wall.  This is
       done to avoid write errors.

SEE ALSO

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

HISTORY

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

AVAILABILITY

       The wall command is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-
       linux/>.

util-linux                                                          August 2013                                                            WALL(1)