wall(1)

wall1

Write a message to users

Usage

wall [-g group] [file]

Overview

The wall utility displays the contents of file or, by default, its standard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users.

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 messages.

-g

Send messages to users in this group. This option may be specified multiple times, and any user in any of the specified groups will receive the message.

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 40 times.

  1. 2.0.5–3.5.1
  2. 4.0–4.2
  3. 4.3
  4. 4.4
  5. 4.5–4.6.2
  6. 4.7–4.11
  7. 5.0–5.2.1
  8. 5.3–6.3
  9. 6.4
  10. 7.0
  11. 7.1
  12. 7.2
  13. 7.3
  14. 7.4
  15. 8.0
  16. 8.1
  17. 8.2
  18. 8.3
  19. 8.4
  20. 9.0
  21. 9.1
  22. 9.2
  23. 9.3
  24. 10.0
  25. 10.1
  26. 10.2
  27. 10.3
  28. 10.4
  29. 11.0
  30. 11.1
  31. 11.2
  32. 11.3
  33. 11.4
  34. 12.0
  35. 12.1
  36. 12.2
  37. 12.3
  38. 12.4
  39. 13.0–13.2
  40. 13.3–14.5
  41. 15.0–16.0

-g since FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE.

History

A wall command appeared in PWB UNIX.

Bugs

The sender's LC_CTYPE setting is used to determine which characters are safe to write to a terminal, not the receiver's (which wall has no way of knowing).

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.