### Fiction About “update-motd” ###

The update-motd package creates a directory “/etc/update-motd.d” (TRUE)
Installs a cronjob, “/etc/cron.d/update-motd” (NOT!!!)
Cron calls /usr/sbin/update-motd every 10 minutes by default (NOT!!!)

The command “/usr/sbin/update-motd” uses run-parts to execute each script in /etc/update-motd.d in lexigraphic order, concatenating the results with the message-of-the-day header “/etc/motd.tail”. (NOT!!!)

### The TRUTH About MOTD ###
Follow these steps:

1) Install the helper package for customizing motd.
apt-get install update-motd

2) Make ONE executable script in “/etc/update-motd.d”. Get rid of all the other scripts in /etc/update-motd.d and use ONE script “10-scriptname”, where “scriptname” is the name of your file without any file extensions. For some reason, all the other scripts you try to create will NEVER get executed.

3) Make a symlink in “/etc/update-motd.d” to a script in a SAFE directory just to be sure that you never lose it (just in case there is a distro update and update-motd gets DEPRECATED).
cd /etc/update-motd.d
ln -s /path/to/your/script 10-scriptname

4) An updated motd will be created ONLY when you login. The “/usr/sbin/update-motd” command does not exist anymore. The cron job is also now fictional/legendary.

5) Fact: “update-motd” is already partially deprecated (see below)
Name: update-motd
Description: superceded by pam_motd in libpam-modules
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/packages/show/162501

Here is a sample script for some very useful (not annoying) information:

#!/bin/bash
function mydate(){
strDayofMonth=$(date +%d)
intLength=${#strDayofMonth}
intOff=$(($intLength-1))
strDayPart=${strDayofMonth:intLength:intOff}

case $strDayPart in

1)
strOrdinal=”st”
;;

2)
strOrdinal=”nd”
;;

3)
strOrdinal=”rd”
;;

*)
strOrdinal=”th”
;;

esac
day=$(date +%d | sed ‘s/^0//’)
myDate=$(date +%A” “%B” $day$strOrdinal, “%Y” at “%l”:”%M%P” “%Z)
}

echo

### START MESSAGE OF THE DAY ###
cal
echo -n “\”$(hostname)\” $(cat /etc/issue)-$(uname -r)”;echo
mydate
echo $myDate
echo

### PHYSICAL DRIVE USAGE ###
drives=$(df | grep “/dev/sd” | awk ‘{print $1}’)
echo “Disk Usage”
echo “----------”
echo “$(df -h --total $drives)”
echo

### IPV4 INTERFACE INFORMATION ###
echo “Interfaces”
echo “----------”
list=$(ifconfig | grep “eth” | awk ‘{print $1}’)
for item in $list; do
address=$(ifconfig $item | grep “inet addr” | awk ‘{print $2}’ | cut -d “:” -f2)
echo “IPV4 Address of $item is $address”
done
echo

### SYSTEM INFORMATION ###
echo “System Info”
echo “-----------”
pcount=$(ps aux | wc -l)
phymem=$(free -m | grep “Mem:” | awk ‘{printf “%d%%\n”, $3*100/$2}’)
swapmem=$(free -m | grep “Swap:” | awk ‘{printf “%d%%\n”, $3*100/$2}’)
echo “Total Processes: $pcount”
echo “Physical memory usage: $phymem”
echo “Swap memory usage: $swapmem”
echo

### USER LOGIN INFORMATION ###
echo “Login Info”
echo “----------”
logins=$(who | wc -l)
echo “Number of users logged in: $logins”
who
echo

exit 0

P.S. Thanks for the article! Interesting and actual as I’ve been just searching for this howto.

it depends on the telnet/ssh server. Some do, some don’t

Not really.I have been using debian,ubuntu,redhat linux servers everytime when you login using ssh or telnet you should see similar to the following message

Linux t61p 2.6.26-5-generic #1 SMP Fri Aug 15 13:54:22 UTC 2008 x86_64

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

To access official Ubuntu documentation, please visit:
http://help.ubuntu.com/

You can see this MOTD message if you are logging using ssh,telnet etc

So -- unless I’m mistaken -- the vast majority of us don’t see that text.