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Name

wall - write to all users

Synopsis

/usr/sbin/wall [ -a ] [ -g grpname ] [ filename ]

Availability

SUNWcsu

Description

wall reads its standard input until an end-of-file. It then sends this message to all currently logged-in users preceded by:

Broadcast Message from ...

If filename is given, then the message is read in from that file. Normally, pseudo-terminals that do not correspond to rlogin sessions are ignored. Thus, when using a window system, the message appears only on the console window. However, -a will send the message even to such pseudo-terminals.

It is used to warn all users, typically prior to shutting down the system.

The sender must be super-user to override any protections the users may have invoked (see mesg(1) ).

wall runs setgid() (see setuid(2) ) to the group ID tty, in order to have write permissions on other user’s terminals.

wall will detect non-printable characters before sending them to the user’s terminal. Control characters will appear as a " ^ " followed by the appropriate ASCII character; characters with the high-order bit set will appear in ‘meta’ notation. For example, ‘\003’ is displayed as ‘^C’ and ‘\372’ as ‘M-z’.

Options

-a
broadcast message to the console and pseudo-terminals.
-g grpname
broadcast to a specified group only.

Environment

If the LC_* variables ( LC_CTYPE, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE, LC_NUMERIC, and LC_MONETARY ) (see environ(5) ) are not set in the environment, the operational behavior of wall for each corresponding locale category is determined by the value of the LANG environment variable. If LC_ALL is set, its contents are used to override both the LANG and the other LC_* variables. If none of the above variables are set in the environment, the "C" (U.S. style) locale determines how wall behaves.

Files

/dev/tty*

See Also

mesg(1) , write(1) , setuid(2) , environ(5)

Notes

‘‘Cannot send to ...’’ when the open on a user’s tty file fails.


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