WALL("1") manual page
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wall - write a message to all users
wall [-n] [-t timeout] [message | file]
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 suid or sgid.
- -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.
- -V, --version
- Display version information and exit.
- -h, --help
- Display help text and exit.
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.
mesg(1)
, talk(1)
,
write(1)
, shutdown(8)
A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
The wall command is part of the util-linux package and is available
from Linux Kernel Archive
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