On Monday 30 October 2006 11:59, Douglas Tutty wrote:
I'm running Etch on my new box and getting it set up.
/etc/motd now points to /var/run/motd and there's a file
/etc/motd.tail
I've tried man motd but it doesn't mention this new setup. I don't want
to break whatever this is, but I don't want the default motd and have
scripts that put reminders into motd (e.g. 2006-10-30 update aptitude)
so that I have to actually remove the comment once I've done it. This
way I don't forget.
What is /etc/motd.tail, why is this like this, and where do I echo my
reminders?
Thanks,
Doug.
Doug,
Good question. I was curious about this, myself. The answer is
in /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh:
# Update motd
uname -snrvm > /var/run/motd
[ -f /etc/motd.tail ] && cat /etc/motd.tail >> /var/run/motd
From this, it appears that /var/run/motd is overwritten every time we reboot,
with the output of `uname -snrvm` (haven't checked the meaning of all these
options, yet). Then, the contents of /etc/motd.tail is appended
to /var/run/motd.
So, it appears that anything we want to appear in motd more or less
permanently must be put into motd.tail.
I believe this answers the your What & Where questions, the answer to Why
probably is buried somewhere in the Debian Policy manual.
Cheers!
cmr