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 stan- dard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users. The command will wrap lines that are longer than 79 characters. Short lines are white- space 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. -h, --help Display help text and exit. -V, --version Display version and exit. NOTES Some sessions, such as wdm(1x), 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. HISTORY A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. SEE ALSO mesg(1), talk(1), write(1), shutdown(8) REPORTING BUGS For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. AVAILABILITY The wall command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. util-linux 2.41.2 2025-09-22 WALL(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTES | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY
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