Re: motd handling in jessie & beyond

[Ansgar Burchardt <"Ansgar Burchardt"@43-1.org>]

Hi,

On 01/22/2015 04:34 PM, Michael Biebl wrote:
> I'm also no longer convinced, that running a huge shell machinery (as
> root) during login via PAM is a good idea.
> 
> If we go the update-motd route, I'd like to see the update-motd calls be
> removed from login (and boot) and instead have the dynamic part of
> /etc/motd be updated via a cron job.

One could also have a bus- or socket-activated service to update the
motd on demand. The PAM module could then query it.

This means
 - the update process could run as an unprivileged user
 - no updates if not needed (unlike a cron-based service)
 - the service could implement a minimum time between updates
 - no races between two processes updating the motd unless the update
   service is implemented in a very suboptimal way
 - as the update service can just exit and will be restarted
   automatically, there are no useless processes around either

If the service is not installed (a good default?), just use a static motd.

Ansgar