WALL(1) User Commands WALL(1)NAMEwall - write a message to users
SYNOPSISwall [-n] [-t TIMEOUT] [file]
DESCRIPTION
Wall displays the contents of file or, by default, its standard input,
on the terminals of all currently logged in users. The command will
cut over 79 character long lines to new lines. Short lines are white
space padded to have 79 characters. The command will always put car‐
riage return and new line at the end of each line.
Only the super-user can write on the terminals of users who have chosen
to deny messages or are using a program which automatically denies mes‐
sages.
Reading from a file is refused when the invoker is not superuser and
the program is suid or sgid.
OPTIONS-n, --nobanner
Suppress banner
-t, --timeout timeout
Write timeout to terminals in seconds. Argument must be posi‐
tive integer. Default value is 300 seconds, which is a legacy
from time when people ran terminals over modem lines.
-V, --version
Output version and exit.
-h, --help
Output help and exit.
SEE ALSOmesg(1), talk(1), write(1), shutdown(8)HISTORY
A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
AVAILABILITY
The wall command is part of the util-linux package and is available
from Linux Kernel Archive ⟨ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-
linux/⟩.
util-linux September 2011 WALL(1)
