SUNWcsu
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’.
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.