WALL(1)

👑 WALL — bestie edition

okay so you know how sometimes you just need to yell something at EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the machine at the same time?? that's wall babes. she's the group-chat broadcast of the Unix world. wall — write a message to all users 💖

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wall [-n] [-t timeout] [-g group] [message | file]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so here's the tea 🫖 — wall takes a message, or the contents of a file, or (if you gave it neither) its standard input, and displays it on the terminals of all currently logged in users. like, everybody. the whole server. no cap.

some formatting deets you need to know, bestie:

• the command will wrap lines that are longer than 79 characters.
• short lines are whitespace padded so they have 79 characters. yes, fr fr, it pads them.
• the command will always put a carriage return and new line at the end of each line.

⚠️ important gatekeeping moment: only the superuser can write on the terminals of users who have chosen to deny messages, or who are using a program which automatically denies messages. so if someone said "don't talk to me", root is the only one who gets to override that. iconic honestly.

🚨 another one: reading from a file is refused when the invoker is not superuser and the program is set-user-ID or set-group-ID. that's a security thing, don't fight it. 😭

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -n, --nobanner — suppress the banner. no little intro card, just straight to the message. lowkey the move when you're being dramatic on purpose.
• -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. (300 seconds!! on a modem!!! the ancestors were fighting for their lives fr fr 🫶)
• -g, --group _group_ — limit printing the message to members of the group defined as a _group_ argument. the argument can be a group name or a GID. targeted chaos only, we love a curated audience ✨
• -h, --help — display help text and exit. the "just tell me what to do" button.
• -V, --version — display version and exit. for when you need to know exactly which era of wall you're dealing with 💖

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📝 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. so it's not ghosting you, it's a deliberate choice. 💀

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🦋 HISTORY 🦋

a wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. she's been screaming into the void since the 70s and honestly? queen behavior. 👑

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• mesg(1)
• talk(1)
• write(1)
• shutdown(8)

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

for bug reports, use the issue tracker:

https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues

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⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

the wall command is part of the util-linux package, which can be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archive:

https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you're officially a wall expert 🎀 this was util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21, and it's still giving main character energy. go tell everyone something. they're waiting. 💖✨🌸