Creating a Custom Dynamic Pre-login MOTD

Devin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:57:08 +0000

Have you ever wanted to create a custom message to be displayed on the Linux pre-login console, which is dynamically updating?

Well, this tutorial will help you do it. I’ve only tested this on Ubuntu 8.04, so please let me know if it works for other distributions. Thanks!

First, create a shell script to re-generate the /etc/issue file. For this example, I’ll create a message that shows how to access the webmin interface. Add this code to a file called /etc/init.d/new_issue.sh:
#!/bin/bash ###################################################### # Prints login/port info above console login prompt. # ###################################################### # get configured IP for eth0 IPADDR=$(/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | sed -n 's/.*inet *addr:$[0-9\.]*$.*/\1/p') # generate new /etc/issue /bin/echo "Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS \n \l" > /etc/issue /bin/echo >> /etc/issue /bin/echo "************************************************" >> /etc/issue /bin/echo "Webmin: https://$IPADDR:12345" >> /etc/issue /bin/echo "************************************************" >> /etc/issue /bin/echo >> /etc/issue exit 0
Once that’s done, issue the following commands to make the script executable, and tell Linux to run as one of the last scripts in the default runlevels:
[root@linux]$ chmod 755 /etc/init.d/new_issue.sh [root@linux]$ update-rc.d new_issue.sh defaults 99
This should now replace the default issue message with your custom one. Then reboot, and you should see your new custom message sitting just above your console login!

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Creating a Custom Dynamic Pre-login MOTD