On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 08:18:33PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes: > > > Please, no. Under normal circumstances, the only dynamic bit of the > > motd comes from uname, and only changes on reboot; updating it via cron > > just wastes cycles and adds noise to syslog. > > > I'm not particularly convinced that even the existing uname line has > > much value. So what about this: why don't we move all of that machinery > > to an update-motd package or similar (priority optional), which can hook > > into PAM as desired to display its message, and have the default motd of > > the base system be completely static, with nothing run at boot *or* > > login? > > I do feel like we're losing some value by not showing users the uname > information by default, What value is that? I've always thought of updating /etc/motd as a bad idea. > and I'd like to still see us update that at boot. I certainly agree that > running shell code from PAM by default is not a good idea. > > That said, by far the best way to handle MOTD is to write out a static > file using whatever configuration management system you're using, based on > all the information that it gathers about the system (via something like > ohai or facter). Exactly. In the few cases where it helps (such as the example of "30k machines" that I saw flow by on this thread), you can easily use whatever config management system you're using to manage that file. On my laptop, I usually *know* what kernel I'm running, if I even care. If we're going to be producing dynamic output by default, I'd much rather see us do something where that dynamic output is actually shown in a dynamic way. I don't think we need to be showing the uname output at all, but *if* we're going to continue doing so, we should just put "uname -a" in /etc/profile and be done with it. That gets us the same result at far less complexity and far less WTF moments for people who are familiar with other unixish operating systems. /etc/motd is supposed to be a *static* file. Installing all kinds of contraptions to make it a dynamically static file is just horrible. -- It is easy to love a country that is famous for chocolate and beer -- Barack Obama, speaking in Brussels, Belgium, 2014-03-26
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