Manual: wall

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.

       -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 .

AVAILABILITY
       The wall command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       .

util-linux 2.41.3					 2025-12-15						     WALL(1)