MOTD "Message of the Day"

A collection of beautiful and useful 'Message of the Day' scripts.

Requirements

• update-motd
• FIGlet, TOIlet, & lolcat (for 10-logo)

How do I set it up?

Copy the files you want in your MOTD to /etc/update-motd.d/.

Tips for Using lolcat with MOTD

Because the MOTD is built dynamically upon login, lolcat requires additional options to display colors and/or non-standard characters such as those that often appear in ASCII art.

• -f, --force

  Force color even when stdout is not a tty (the MOTD is not considered a tty)

• LANG=en_US.UTF-8

  Use as a prefix in MOTD scripts when including non-standard characters

Examples:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 lolcat -f he7ix-logo.txt

toilet -f smslant "$(hostname)" | lolcat -f

Testing

The run-parts command is the easiest way to test the MOTD scripts as it will run all scripts in a directory in alphanumeric order:

run-parts /etc/update-motd.d

Customize your MOTD

Adding your own MOTD is as easy as placing an executable script in /etc/update-motd.d/. The filename must be formatted as: Two digits, hyphen, unique name. Example:

20-uptime

Rules

• Files can not contain an extension (e.g.: .sh, .py)
• The file can be any executable type your system is capable of running, usually defined by the she bang (#!) on the first line
• Scripts will execute in numerical order

To make a MOTD script executable:

chmod +x /etc/update-motd.d/{{nn-SCRIPT-NAME}}