RWALL(1)

📦
version 0.17 · 4 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💌 RWALL(1) — general commands manual, but make it gossip

okay bestie, so you know how wall(1) yells at everybody on your machine? rwall is that but it yells at everybody on somebody else's machine. long-distance screaming. iconic behavior honestly. 🌈

✨ NAME ✨

rwall — send a message to users logged on a host 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

rwall host [file]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe: rwall sends a message to all the users who are logged into the host you name. that's it, that's the whole job, and it eats every single time. 🍓

The message you wanna send? two options, both valid, no wrong answers:

  • type it right in, live, and then hit EOF to say "okay I'm done talking" 😌
  • or just point at a file that already has your message in it, because sometimes you have thoughts pre-written and that's called being prepared, queen behavior

💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

these are the ways it can go wrong and ngl some of them are a little dramatic 😭

  • rwall: RPC: Program not registered the rpc.rwalld(8) daemon has not been started on the remote host. like, nobody's home. the door is locked. the lights are off. 🚪
  • rwall: RPC: Timed out a communication error occurred, bestie. either the network is excessively congested (it's giving rush hour traffic on the information superhighway 🚗💨) or the rpc.rwalld(8) daemon has terminated on the remote host. either way, no reply, ghosted fr fr 👻
  • rwall: RPC: Port mapper failure - RPC: Timed out the remote host is not running the portmapper (peep portmap(8) for the lore), so it literally cannot accommodate any RPC-based services at all. the host may be down. not me diagnosing a whole server over here 💀
⚠️ heads up, these are all real errors and they all mean the message did not go through. no silent failures, no fake success, the drama is honest at least 🙈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

the whole friend group, basically 🫶

📜 HISTORY 📜

the rwall command appeared in SunOS. it's been out here sending messages across hosts since before your fave was born, lowkey a legend, highkey a relic 👑

and that's the tea, bestie 💖 this lil page is from Linux NetKit (0.17), dated August 15, 1999 — so yeah it's older than most of us but it still slays, and now you know exactly how it works. go forth and wall the whole network. periodt. 🌸✨

📦 where this page comes from