You can send messages to logged users on a server with several commands: in this tutorial we will learn to use ‘wall’ and ‘write’.

Table of Contents

wall

wall allows to send a message to all logged users.

wall <message>
# wall "Test message"

You can also display the contents of a file or standard input. Users will see something like this on their terminal:

Broadcast message from root@localhost (pts/2) (Fri Mar 25 12:33:45 2022):

Test message

Run man wall for more info.

write

With write you can comunicate easily to other users by sending multi-line messages. Just run write and the username (and optionally, TTY name).

write <username>
# write ricardo

Then, write your messages and press Enter to send them. When you are done, type an EOF character (Ctrl + D). The recipient will see something like this:

Message from root@localhost on pts/2 at 12:32 ...  
test message  
EOF

The recipient can reply by running write as well. Run man write for more info.

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