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 <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                                    2025-02-26                                            WALL(1)