wall — Broadcast a message to logged-in users

Format

wall [message]

Description

wall sends a message to all logged-in users. The wall command reads from the standard input (stdin). Type each line, pressing Enter after each. After you finish typing the message, enter End-of-File or an interrupt (typically, <EscChar-D> for End-of-File or <EscChar-C> for an interrupt, where EscChar is normally the cent sign; if you use rlogin or telnet to enter the shell, hold down the Ctrl key while pressing either D or C).

You must be a superuser to ensure permission to write to all the ttys that are logged in. If you are not a superuser, then writes to all ttys will fail (except your own) and those users will not receive the message. Superusers can also get failures if the /etc/utmpx file does not correctly represent the users currently logged in.

Recipients of the message receive a beep announcing the message. The message is displayed in this form:

Broadcast Message from SWEHR@AQFT (ttyp0006) at 10:43:54 (EDT5EST)...

This is the text of the message line1.
This is line2.

Exit values

0

wall successfully sent the message to all users.

1

Failure due to any of the following:

No message was entered in response to the prompt.
You do not have permission to write to a user's terminal.