How to change message of the day (MOTD) in Ubuntu server

I think you will find that /etc/motd is only displayed on text-logins, not GUI ones (on what used to be init level 3, if that helps explain anything).

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

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

If you want an easy way to silence motd for a single user, run touch ~/.hushlogin. Personally, I find motd annoying.

LOL 🙂

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

### Posted for Posterity ###
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32-Bit Server Edition
I run a headless server as a gateway, the “Message of The Day” is an essential tool for quickly seeing what is happening on a server. The “motd” script is also linked to my aliases file so that this info can be accessed quickly.

### 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Description: superceded by pam_motd in libpam-modules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