# wall

## 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.
    


## 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/>. This page is
           part of the _util-linux_ (a random collection of Linux utilities)
           project. Information about the project can be found at 
           ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
           bug report for this manual page, send it to
           util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
           project's upstream Git repository
           ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
           2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
           was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
           rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
           believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
           or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
           COLOPHON (which is _not_ part of the original manual page), send a
           mail to man-pages@man7.org
    
    util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-08-09                        _WALL_(1)
    


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