Sysadmins - What's in Your MOTD?

permaculture asks: "This is a 'knowledge management' issue, on a University network. For many years we've had a network 'Message of the Day' that appears when any network user logs in. MOTD lists planned service outages for maintenance, progress on current issues, upcoming holidays, and other items that affect network users. Recently, this has been replaced by a page that announces general University business such as Open weeks, upcoming awards etc. There's a link on the page to the network MOTD that used to greet every user immediately after login. Does your network have a 'Message of the Day' that appears at login? Is it a Corporate business page, entirely related to network services, or something else entirely?"

Comments

Funny you should ask.

[grub]

I was just thinking of upgrading mine. It currently reads:

[grub@shrubbery grub]$ cat /etc/motd

"Ask Slashdot" has reached a new low!

[grub@shrubbery grub]$

Re:Funny you should ask.

[duplicate-nickname]

/me is confused

C:\>cat /etc/motd
'cat' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
 
C:\>

Re:Funny you should ask.

[PaulK]

paul@webcamboss:~$ cat /etc/motd If you can read this, then I haven't gotten around to screwing with you yet. Please be patient. paul@webcamboss:~$

Re:Funny you should ask.

[Richard Steiner]

Wow... I get a completely different response:

>cat /etc/motd
DATA IGNORED - IN CONTROL MODE

Re:Funny you should ask.

[Anonymous Coward]

chaz@linux:~> cat /etc/motd

FOAD

chaz@linux:~>

They call and ask what it means. I tell them either to figure it out or, it's a "system code".

Re:Funny you should ask.

[BillEGoat]

When Chuck Norris logs on, he doesn't use a password. He just stares at the terminal until it pees the carpet and lets him on.

http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

Re:Funny you should ask.

[scragz]

Slighty modified for lameness circumvention. (Lameness circumvention for proper posts is considered fair use and is allowed under the LMCA).

$ cat /etc/motd

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UNAUTHORIZED USERS WILL BE KILLED AND EATEN ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unauthorized access prohibited; all access and activities not explicitly
authorized by [ i ] motion design are unauthorized. All activities are
monitored and logged. There is no privacy on this system. Unauthorized
access and activities or any criminal activity will be reported to
appropriate authorities.

Re:Funny you should ask.

[dshaw858]

The system that I use simply gave me a wonderful little notice saying that unauthorized users are, well, unauthorized, and that they reserve the right to monitor activities.

A special significance of this might be that it's from a university system, like the one in question by the... er, Asker. It's a research ssh account from a University of California system. So, there's at least one response from another university :)

- dshaw

Re:Funny you should ask.

[LordNightwalker]

FOAD

Heh, nice one, but I think I trump you... At my job I was asked, together with my colleague, to set new root passwords on all our boxes a while ago. We decided to come up with some pretty tough ones to crack, but just for fucks sake leave the password hints in plain sight.

Enter the MOTD... Right now, anyone logging in at one of our servers is greeted with a tongue-in-cheek taunt to try and figure out the root password. The taunt sentence is the basis from which the password is derived. But the process of deriving the password from the taunt sentence alone is pretty hard... For example, "computer" may be represented in the password string as [1+1] (to denote a box that does computations) or 1+1=>[]=>2 to denote a box that accepts computational jobs and outputs results. Or it can just be represented as "c". ;)

The only problem with this scheme: even though I was the one coming up with the taunts and the corresponding passwords, I sometimes have to ring up my colleague when I try to get root on one of the boxes where I rarely use the root account. I made the passwords so hard to derive that the password hint kind of loses its purpose...

Re:Funny you should ask.

[dgatwood]

$ cat /etc/motd

This computer is protected by Vicious Geek Security.
You break it, I break you.

Re:Funny you should ask.

[Tower]

Another one when I try...

> cat /etc/motd
            / not in expression enclosed in parentheses.
            Error found on *N command.

Re:Funny you should ask.

[jrockway]

I get:

cat /etc/motd
Illegal division by zero at - line 1.

Re:Funny you should ask.

[wfberg]

C:\>cat /etc/motd
'cat' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

On windows, you need to use
type C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\motd

Re:Funny you should ask.

[Anonymous Coward]

[grub@shrubbery grub]$ mkdir new_folder
mkdir: cannot create directory `new_folder': Permission denied

wtf???

[grub@shrubbery grub]$ pwd
/boot/grub

DOH!

Re:Funny you should ask.

[NobodyExpects]

You're lucky it wasn't a Blue Screen...

Re:Funny you should ask.

[Richard Steiner]

Not possible on the mainframe I was using at the time. :-)

MOTD

[Fallen Kell]

Attention Cluster users... Node90, node104, and node243 are down for maintainance/repair. Please update pbs and lammpi configurations to reflect the reduction of 12 processors. Thank you.

Message of the *day*

[PayPaI]

[ben@bees ~]$ ls -l /etc/motd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 138 Jul 28 2000 /etc/motd

Warning of the day

[steed074]

My university displays more of a EULA than a MOTD - this pops up at logon.

This is a Northwestern State University information system. This system, including all related equipment, networks and network devices (specifically including Internet access), are provided only for authorized University use. I acknowledge that I will adhere to the terms and conditions of the Northwestern Electronic Data Processing Standards and Policies. I understand that my account will be terminated on my last day of employment after which I will not have access to e-mail or any files on the University PC assigned to me or on University shared storage devices.

Re:Warning of the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Best part of the MOTD from our med school:

| Authorized use only. If you haven't been issued a login, you're not sup- |
| posed to be here.
|

Re:Warning of the day

[ottothecow]

very similar here (slightly edited to avoid lameness filter):

harper:~> cat /etc/motd
                                  Sun Microsystems Inc. Solaris 8 (64 bit)

                                        Welcome to harper.uchicago.edu
                    provided by NSIT/NSENSA at the University of Chicago.

        All users must be familiar with NSIT's Eligibility and Acceptable
        Use Policy for Information Technology. It is available by typing
        the command "lynx http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/policies/eaup/".

                                    For help, type the command "help".

****
NSIT Electronic Mail services are generally unavailable during the early
morning hours (around 4 a.m.) every Wednesday and Sunday.
****

Re:Warning of the day

[ottothecow]

however, if I ssh into any of the linux terminals in the labs, the motd is just a bunch of disclaimer jibberish about debian

My MOTD is...

[Anonymous Coward]

well, to be honest, the Message Of The Day, is. uhm.. the message of the day :) Wasnt that obvious?

Mine is ...

[just_another_sean]

... the output of fortune run by root in a nightly cron job. :-)

Re:Mine is ...

[aldragon]

Ooh, nice hack for not getting different ones in all your terminals and such :)

Re:Mine is ...

[plover]

One day one of the guys left his terminal logged in as root. I edited it from a call to fortune to instead be:

echo He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.

Of course, once he found out who did it, he changed my the folder on my user account from /usr/~john to /dev/floppy until I went begging his forgiveness. I didn't do it again.

Re:Mine is ...

[dknj]

at my last job, i allowed consultants to fuck with each other if they left their machines open for abuse (i.e. leave a root window open or an administrator account unlocked on their computer). one consultant set his root password to abc123, another consultant found out and started abusing his machine. the hacked consultant came crying to me for justice and i threatened to fire him if he didn't find and fix his security flaws. since then he has become a bit more security-minded.

Re:Mine is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you misread "Sysadmins" as "PHBs" in the thread title?

Re:Mine is ...

[just_another_sean]

Yeah I find seeing too many of them in a day takes something away from them. I start ignoring them after a while...

figlet of course

[Anonymous Coward]

hostname | figlet > /etc/motd

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is definitely a topic that merits serious discussion.
I use fortune.

From Mail/Calendaring server

[apenzott]

Events on calendar are closer than they appear.

NiN

[Anonymous Coward]

head like a hole
black as your soul
I'd rather die
than give you control

Re:NiN

[Anonymous Coward]

... for a firewall, that is.

Re:NiN

[quantum bit]

Everything I touch(1), I ~#

Veni, vidi, vici

[mmell]

I think the last administrator to touch MOTD set that - it was a really original idea at the time!

We have a new MOTD

[Bromskloss]

It's a bit scary, but just this day our MOTD got changed to "We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.". :-/

Re:We have a new MOTD

[techno-vampire]

If you know who did it, have them leave it that way for a few days, then change it to:

We are the Vogons. Resistance is *USELESS!*

Re:We have a new MOTD

[Bromskloss]

We are the Vogons. Resistance is *USELESS!*

And you are all very welcome to a poetry evening in the small auditorium on thursday 19.00.

Re:We have a new MOTD

[sconeu]

        We are the Vogons. Resistance is *USELESS!*

And you are all very welcome to a poetry evening in the small auditorium on thursday 19.00.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Re:We have a new MOTD

[r3jjs]

We are the electrons.

Resistance is voltage / current.

A quote

[daveewart]

Our network announcements and other notices are elsewhere, so I put a Quote Of The Day in our MOTD.

Nothing

[The Barking Dog]

On all the systems I admin, it's a zero-byte file. I don't know why I don't just delete it; I think so FreeBSD's mergemaster won't simply put one back in place when I rebuild the system.

Re:Nothing

[Fweeky]

"I don't know why I don't just delete it; I think so FreeBSD's mergemaster won't simply put one back in place when I rebuild the system."

echo IGNORE_MOTD=yes >>/etc/mergemaster.rc

Message of the eon

[ZiZ]

DoublePlusBSD 0.0.0 (BIGBROTHER) #1: Wed Feb 29 04:20:00 GMT 1984

      not entirely working in your best interests
                            -- since 1984 --

Access to and use of this server is restricted to those
activities expressly permitted by the system administion
staff.  If you're not sure if it's allowed, DON'T DO IT.

Re:Message of the eon

[waveclaw]

Wikipedia has a page on Messages of the Day which is surprisingly short. And their pag mainly serves to disambiguate motd proper from a minor animie meme about repetative antagonists.

Oddly enough, motd.org is actually a site advertising what amounts to shell access. They appear to be a month late with delivery.

Notice To Users

        This computer system is the private property of user $FOO. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.
        Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to your employer, to authorized site, government, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of government agencies, both domestic and foreign.
      By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of such personnel or officials. Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in civil and criminal penalties and administrative or disciplinary action, as appropriate. By continuing to use this system you indicate your awareness of and consent to these terms and conditions of use. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the conditions stated in this warning.

                -- www.waveclaw.net

Largely compiled from other sources.

why bother, people don't read

[Gothmolly]

And if they do read, they don't care. If you tell them that Friday at 3pm, the a server is going down, they'll ignore it, and call you at 3:01 screaming that they are kicked off.

People don't care about your silly technical problems, they've learned that screaming loudly works, as it does. They don't care that you had to reboot the mail server because Exchange died again, goddammit, they have important email to send, what are you, incompetent?

And, your boss will kiss their ass and make excuses for your failures, and discuss grand schemes to Make Sure It Doesn't Happen Again.

Yes, I work at $LARGE_US_BANK, and this sort of thing does happen. Technologists are only ever the reason that people can't get work done, we're never seen as enablers.

Why do you think the BastardOperatorFromHell is such a powerful meme?

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Hast]

I think the idea is that things like mail really *should* work all the time.

Sadly that doesn't seem to be the way Exchange is designed to work.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't care about your silly technical problems, they've learned that screaming loudly works, as it does. They don't care that you had to reboot the mail server because Exchange died again, goddammit, they have important email to send, what are you, incompetent?

To be honest, you sound pretty incompetent to me.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Anonymous Coward]

. They don't care that you had to reboot the mail server because Exchange died again, goddammit, they have important email to send, what are you, incompetent?

Yes, you are incompetent.

I haven't rebooted the mail server for my company for 3 years now when it was moved from one datacenter to another (and even there, the new one was brought and we waited for DNS caches to flush before the old one was taken down).
Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem.

(or was that supposted to be a rhetorical question)

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Tsunayoshi]

People don't care about your silly technical problems, they've learned that screaming loudly works, as it does.

Oh God is this true where I work. The sysadmin staff will engineer a decent solution, using the minimal amount of machines, replete with all required network and system security (we are a DOD shop), and every Tom, Dick and Harry won't shut the fuck up until they get exactly what they want because senior management will give it to them because Tom/Dick/Harry are louder and management is deathly afraid of failure.

We constantly ask them why they bother paying us to be the technical gurus if they never listen to our engineering designs.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh God, shut your *nix fanboi gob. A properly designed Exchange organization will run until you decide to power off for hardware maintenance.

I've several clients with Server 2003 & Exchange 2003 that run 24x7 with no issues.

Please kindly STFU until you've some experience, young man.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[nizo]

Ironically, the last time my boss had problems with Exchange was the day he decided to hire someone to migrate all the services the company cared about to Linux. So in a way using Exchange did lead to a more stable mail system. Yeah for me!

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Ryan Amos]

There are ways to make mail work even if exchange doesn't. The easiest way is to drop a caching mail server running sendmail/exim/postfix/qmail/carrier pigeon in front of it using the exchange server as a smart host. This way when exchange blows up, the messages are cached and not lost forever.

If you can't have at least one of your MXes accept mail and deliver it to the correct mailbox at some point in time, you should not be an admin.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[RemovableBait]

Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem.

9 times out of 10, replacing the mail servers and Exchange with *something else* is not an option. You just have to deal with what you've got. If Exchange shits itself every other day and replacing it is out of the question, does that make you incompetent? No.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[OrangeSpyderMan]

You just have to deal with what you've got. If Exchange shits itself every other day and replacing it is out of the question, does that make you incompetent? No.

Perhaps not, and I am certainly not a big Ms fan, but if Exchange is "shitting itself" every day in your organisation, then the guys who set it up are incompetent. It ain't perfect, but I work for an organisation with over 70,000 users worldwide who have Exchange mailboxes. It's not perfect, but if it shat itself every day on even one of the cluster nodes it's running on it would be unbearable. If yours is doing that, then get help from an engineer who can help stabilise the environment.
I think we're all a bit too quick to say "They chose the wrong thing - it'll never work" when in many cases the problems can be fixed, just the person doesn't know how. If you hire a linux admin to look after your E2K servers, then I'd say you're wrong as ou would be to hire a Wintel admin to manage your UNIX web servers. If your Exchange is so badly behaved get someone in to fix it and tell them they have 3 months to do so and stop complaining, and stop hiring people that would rather complain about how all the choices are wrong than actually get their hands dirty and fix something :)

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Hast]

Oh mail are seldom lost, that's not the problem.

The problem is that if I'm typing a mail in Outlook and suddenly it can't access the server any more (network congestion probably) then it panics. When it panics it freeses the mail app and throws up an alert message ("Can't access server.") Naturally since it's using Word to edit the mails that means any other Word documents I'm reading also freeze.

And that, inevitably, leads to a stream of curses from my mouth. (I don't call and blame the IT people though, it usually stops after less than a minute.)

Re:why bother, people don't read

[RemovableBait]

Personally, I don't have any problems with Exchange. It works alright and problems are few and far between. The biggest negative is that we have to pay MS for it.

I just have a problem with people who say things like: "Yes, you are incompetent. Use something other than Exchange, and something other than whatever you're running exchange on and you won't have that problem." :)

Re:why bother, people don't read

[dbIII]

typing a mail in Outlook and suddenly it can't access the server any more (network congestion probably) then it panics

Outlook not so good.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Karl Cocknozzle]

The problem is that if I'm typing a mail in Outlook and suddenly it can't access the server any more (network congestion probably) then it panics.

Microsoft "fixed" this problem in Outlook XP/2003... ...Instead of freezing, it throws up a balloon that says "Outlook is requesting data." Which is just useless enough to make a user call. "Hey, what the hell does 'Outlook is requesting data' mean?"

Thanks, Bill. Glad we put our eggs in your wicker basket...

Re:why bother, people don't read

[dbIII]

if Exchange is "shitting itself" every day in your organisation, then the guys who set it up are incompetent.

I've seen that incompetance, but it doesn't take much incompetance to break things. The Exchange "expert" who came in to do an upgrade failed to apply a paticular patch that stopped the system from being an open relay by default. Along with traps like that there are all the third party add ons (fax gateways etc) which are the whole reason you are using Exchange instead of just an email system in the first place. Some of those introduce instability - some of them prevent you from ever changing the postmaster password again. The requirement, at least in earlier versions, to stop all Exchange services before you do a backup was a liability in businesses that operate 24/7 - people who cannot send email at 4am tend to be somewhat annoyed by the concept. The thing that disturbed me the most about it was the incredibly convoluted procedure for recovering old mail on another machine while still running the production server undisturbed - I'm very happy that I never had to do it in a hurry and I never had to do a bare metal restore of an Exchange server for any reason other than this. Obviously the test machine was kept as a spare because you don't want to waste a full day coaxing Exchange back to life while mail is down.

As a disclaimer here I haven't used Exchange since it was a toy mail system (about version 4), so some things may no longer apply - I hope. A small company would not want to buy two licences for every site just to be able to do backups without losing the ability to send mail - or just to be able to have a decent disaster recovery procedure that won't put them offline for 24 hours.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Anonymous Coward]

...so you don't apply patches ?
--

Re:why bother, people don't read

[DarkProphet]

Its not the bank with the horsies and the stagecoach, is it? ;-) I may or may not at one time worked there and noticed the same thing.

But to be fair, the helpdesk consisted of idiots that didn't know the first thing about the systems they were supporting, as opposed to the admins that really know what the hell is going on. I had a problem with our sales software one day (erm, well I had problems with it regularly, but thats another matter). I called the helpdesk and explained that such-and-such-sales-software-program was failing to connect to its backend database, preventing me from logging in and getting work done. In total deadpan, the helpdesk crony stated they'd never heard of such-and-such-sales-software-program before...

TOO BAD IT WAS THE ONLY *-sales-software-program WE USED!!

*sigh* I only have to remember that instance whenever I get nostalgic about THAT job ;-)

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Bill Walker]

If you tell them that Friday at 3pm, the a server is going down, they'll ignore it, and call you at 3:01 screaming that they are kicked off.

Maybe they were just annoyed that you chose to kick everyone off the server during trading hours, potentially costing the bank tens of millions of dollars.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Anonymous Coward]

If Exchange shits itself every other day and replacing it is out of the question, does that make you incompetent? No.

It makes Microsoft, and anyone stupid enough to pay them money, incompetent.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Hast]

Nope, I have Outlook 2003. I do get that dialog, but it still freezes the programs.

Re:why bother, people don't read

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I stopped reading after "sendmail"

Re:why bother, people don't read

[RMH101]

It's not there to be read. It's there so that if someone claims in a court of law that they didn't know they weren't meant to access that system, a lawyer can stand up and say "yes you did: and not only that - you clicked 'continue' to indicate you'd read the MOTD expressly telling you".

What you get when you run file shares....

[Rydia]

>cat /etc/motd
Benden Weyr: Now with 200% more Space Elf-related program activity!

Words of Wisdom

[mabu]

I've found that inspiring and thought-provoking quotes are very useful. We use them on our systems. One place that's good for information is Words of Wisdom. They also have a daily mailout of high-quality quotes.

Notice

[eht]

Notice

This is a Department of Defense computer system.
This computer system, including all related equipment, networks, and network devices (specifically Internet access), are provided only for authorized U.S. government use.

DoD Computer systems may be monitored for all lawful purposes, including to ensure that their use is authorized, for management of the system, to facilitate protection against unauthorized access, and to verify security procedures, servivability, and operational security. Monitoring includes active attacks by authorized DoD entities to test or verify the security of this system. During monitoring, information may be examined, recorded, copied, and used for authorized purposes. All information, including personal information, placed on or sent over this system may be monitored. There is no expectation of privacy in any information transmitted in or through this system.

Use of this DoD computer system, authorized or unauthorized, constitutes consent to monitoring of this system. Unauthorized use may be subject to criminal prosecution. Evidence collected during monitoring may be used for administrative, criminal, or other adverse action. Use of this system constitutes consent to monitoring for these purposes.

Re:Notice

[Valdrax]

Out of curiosity, do you know if there's any law that prevents you from putting that notice on any random system outside of the DoD? That would be a great motd for a "don't touch me" laptop.

Re:Notice

[Tsunayoshi]

Dude, I am reporting your Slashdot ID to DISA since you obviously hacked my server and stole my MOTD.

<disclaimer>I am a DOD sysadmin</disclaimer>

Re:Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

This computer system,...are provided only for authorized U.S. government use.

Oops. Looks like you just violated your own MOTD - since copying&pasting crap to /. is almost certainly not authorized U.S. government use. Good thing it's not a real license agreement and it's only real value is to sound ub3r l33t.

Re:Notice

[Tsunayoshi]

I sincerely doubt it. DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency or something) requires that type of notice on every DOD affiliated system. I don't see how anyone could prosecute you for posting the same notice somewhere else, unless you had an intent to somehow get yourself connected to a DOD network fraudulently, in which case I hope you would enjoy an extended vacation in GITMO, you terrorist...

Re:Notice

[Kesch]

Heh, I have something similar on this comp:

(There is a line of stars here, but the Lameness Filter won't accept it)
                                                    NOTICE TO USERS

This is a Federal computer system and is the property of the United
States Government. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or
unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be
intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed
to authorized site, Department of Energy, and law enforcement personnel,
as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.
By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring,
recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of
authorized site or Department of Energy personnel.

Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative
disciplinary action and civil and criminal penalties. By continuing to use
this system you indicate your awareness of and consent to these terms and
conditions of use. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the conditions
stated in this warning.

(There is also a line of *'s here.)

Re:Notice

[sconeu]

Shouldn't that be in /etc/issue, not in /etc/motd?

Re:Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

This computer system,...are provided only for authorized U.S. government use.

Oops. Looks like you just violated your own MOTD

It also looks like the DoD violated the Grammar Nazi rules for subject-verb agreement.

Re:Notice

[jnf]

i wonder if thats a doe standard, im pretty sure thats exactly what my workstations say.

Very little

[vanyel]

...otherwise people bellyache mightily. I put just the most critical announcements and a url to a more general info page.

Sarbox Bites

[Goyuix]

Many of us can't screw with the MOTD because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and are stuck with some legal notice that is it is a private system, you need access, blah blah...

I do plan to watch this thread, hoping for some gems to pop-out though for my private systems :)

Re:Sarbox Bites

[Fallen Kell]

You do know that is what the /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net files are for don't you? You can even have them referenced in ssh connections as well if you modify your pam config files.

Re:Sarbox Bites

[Valdrax]

Well, I don't know about him, but I didn't.
Thanks for pointing out their existence. I'll have to thinker with them when I get home.

Re:Sarbox Bites

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, what the heck does legislation regarding :

• certification of financial reports,
• bans on personal loans,
• accelerated repoting of trades,
• longer jail terms for willfully misstating finance,
• restrictions on audit firms doing consulting

have on a MOTD.

Except for the comptuers that your finance group and accountants use, it seems not to apply to me (though IANAL).

I've seen SOX blamed for some amazing things (in my last CEO's quarterly analyst call, he blamed SOX for poor profit despite strong revenue) -- but never yet restrictions on what to put in the MOTD!!!!

Re:Sarbox Bites

[Zephyros]

I'm a SOX IT auditor...if your auditors are giving you flak about your MOTD, they're being seriously, seriously anal. SOX has nothing to do with anything so banal and unimportant as MOTDs.

Re:Sarbox Bites

[grudgelord]

I've seen SOX blamed for some amazing things (in my last CEO's quarterly analyst call, he blamed SOX for poor profit despite strong revenue) -- but never yet restrictions on what to put in the MOTD!!!!

This is poo.

Most likely this particular complaint stems from the costs associated of external auditors in the auditor independance clause, redesign in compliance with the PCAOB internal controls proceedures, and overall cost of implementation under 404. However, if all this is done correctly, after initial compliance cost, the only significant cost should be the recurring cost of an external auditing team, which should be a drop in the bucket when weighed against a publicly traded company's revenue and can be justified as nothing more than an operations cost. Now this is dejour versus defacto of couse. In a perfect world...

No, it's not cheap, but to blame a poor revenue to profit margin on SOX is a load. Besides, if the CEOs weren't lying, cheating, and stealing to begin with then they'd never have gotten SarbOxed in the head to begin with. They made their bed...

Back to the topic, SOX shouldn't have any direct effect on the ability to update a MOTD but various security restrictions can make it difficult for some "Administrators" to do their job due to limited rights and its possible that the MOTD (and more vital functions) to one of these. This of couse indicates piss-poor design in need of reevaluation, which of course spells additional cost of reimplementation. Thus your CEOs whining.

But that's just my take in it. Far be it from me to actually understand anything that emerges from the minds of executive management.

Re:Sarbox Bites

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. An appropriate internal control is ensuring that relevant laws are adhered to. In the case of law relating to unauthorised access to systems, many jurisdictions require that warnings be displayed in banners, motd, etc to provide sufficient warning to potential perps, otherwise the case could be thrown out of court.

ASCII Goatse in my MOTD

[spun]

Mwahahaha! Who wants to "log on" to my system now? Just don't ask me to patch any security holes...

Re:ASCII Goatse in my MOTD

[Thunderbear]

I sincerely don't think it is possible to render it in ASCII so it will be recognizable.

Want to give it a try?

she did not get it..

[hookedup]

I can not remember off the top of my head what we have as ours, something about unauthorized use, etc..

I do however remember when a user called an asked us why it said "purple monkey diswasher" instead of the normal legal lingo. Turns out her 'new' pc had been in used in our test evironment, and someone forgot to switch it over before putting it on her desk.

Re:she did not get it..

[Anonymous Coward]

I use to work at a Novell shop where I used login scripts to offer user specific greeting messages. Most got the standard: Good %time_of_day% %username%.

But some special people got: Greetings %firstname%, exalted poobah. or Oh %firstname%, I love when you press my buttons! or the obligatory: I can't do that, Dave. and even a few: if %time_of_day%=morning then write Jesus %firstname%! Must you do this so early in the morning?

At the time, it was regarded as funny by all concerned. Today, I suspect the company would get a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Our motd is user editable

[chiapet]

It's a lively file. We get tons of flames and trolls. Randomly, we get a genuine question and, more often than not, the question gets answered. Most of the users try to play nice and not overwrite each other. I'm not sure what the record is, but we got our motd to get over 1000+ lines. It gives me a warm fuzzy to see all that scrolling text.

Re:Our motd is user editable

[Random Destruction]

What kind of environment is this? workplace, school?

Re:Our motd is user editable

[Anonymous Coward]

His parent's basement. He's got split-personality syndrom.

Re:Our motd is user editable

[chiapet]

it's a school server. there's an official part of the motd and the user-editable, free-for-all part of the motd. there's a daemon that cats the files together to form /etc/motd.

Re:Our motd is user editable

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you run a shell provider?

Re:Our motd is user editable

[Requiem Aristos]

It's a lively file. We get tons of flames and trolls.

Not now it isn't.

(still bitter that root hasn't got to my account yet.)

Oooh

[jb.hl.com]

FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE (GENERIC) #0: Thu Nov 3 09:36:13 UTC 2005

Welcome to FreeBSD!

Before seeking technical support, please use the following resources:

o Security advisories and updated errata information for all releases are
      at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ - always consult the ERRATA section
      for your release first as it's updated frequently.

o The Handbook and FAQ documents are at http://www.freebsd.org/ and,
      along with the mailing lists, can be searched by going to
      http://www.freebsd.org/search/. If the doc distribution has
      been installed, they're also available formatted in /usr/share/doc.

If you still have a question or problem, please take the output of
`uname -a', along with any relevant error messages, and email it
as a question to the questions@FreeBSD.org mailing list. If you are
unfamiliar with FreeBSD's directory layout, please refer to the hier(7)
manual page. If you are not familiar with manual pages, type `man man'.

You may also use sysinstall(8) to re-enter the installation and
configuration utility. Edit /etc/motd to change this login announcement.

joe@gateway$

hth.

Server name

[Anonymous Crowhead]

I use this ascii generator to put the name of the server in all the servers I admin.

http://www.network-science.de/ascii/

I favor 'standard' as the font.

Re:Server name

[belg4mit]

Bah, that's not an "ASCII generator"... it's FIGlet.

I hate stupid users.

[__aaxwdb6741]

Rule #1: Do not speak about dienub
Rule #2: Do not speak about dienub
Rule #3: Whatever it was in that cool movie
Rule #4: If I dislike your behaviour on this server, I will purge your
                account, and publish your entire home directory in a public IRC
                channel.
                This includes, nonexclusively, sending global messages, using retarded
                exploits (Both against this and other servers), ban evasion, etc.

Too many faulty login attempts will get you banned by DenyHosts. Generate a
fucking keypair and use it for authentication. Passwords are insecure.

Sincerely,
Your friendly BOFH.

Fortune, of course

[ArcherB]

With added mods:
Simpsons
Futurama
Bush Quotes
Hitchhikers Guide

login as: bryan
Password:
Last login: Sat Apr 22 11:26:08 2006 from rrcs-24-227-212-27.sw.biz.rr.com
FIVE DAYS IS NOT TOO LONG TO WAIT FOR A GUN
FIVE DAYS IS NOT TOO LONG TO WAIT FOR A GUN
FIVE DAYS IS NOT TOO LONG TO WAIT FOR A GUN
FIVE DAYS IS NOT TOO LONG TO WAIT FOR A GUN

                Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 1F20
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
                If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you
brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-
up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and
repeat the sequence.
                You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to
hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it
again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around
your own apartment?
                                -- William S. Burroughs
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes,
Calm down, it's only bits and bytes,
Calm down, and speak to me in English,
Please realize that I'm not one of your computerites.
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back at the rear of an
elephant.
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
                                -- Amrom Katz
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *can*
you believe?!"
                                -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
bryan@rr4linux ~ $ fortune
Day X+4 months: Microsoft ships NT 5.0 for Intel.with a big media
                                event on TV. IBM begins to ship Debian 4.6 as the
                                standard OS on all machines from mainframe to PC
                                and announces the move on Slashdot.
                -- Christoph Lameter

inappropriate motds

[Anonymous Coward]

Boss's work Credit Card info -- Doubles as an IDS
Company gossip
Ascii porn
random line from salaries.xls
latest /. headline
grep $bossip /var/log/squid/access.log | tail -n 5

This is at home, but...

[Boone^]

$ cat /etc/motd
Welcome to Darwin!

Ascii goatse (nt)

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

MOTD

[Anonymous Coward]

Attention!
This is a DOD computer system. Before processing classified information,
check the security accreditation level of this system. Do not process, store,
or transmit information classified above the accreditation level of this
system. This computer system, including all related equipment, networks
and network devices (includes internet access) are provided only for
authorized U.S. Government use. DOD computer systems may be monitored for
all lawful purposes, including to ensure that their use is authorized, for
management of the system, to facilitate protection against unauthorized
access, and to verify security procedures, survivability, and operational
security. monitoring includes, but is not limited to, active attacks by
authorized DOD entities to test or verify the security of this system. During
monitoring, information may be examined, recorded, copied, and used for
authorized purposes. All information, including personal information,
placed on or sent over this system may be monitored. Use of this DOD
computer system, authorized or unauthorized, constitutes consent to
monitoring. Unauthorized use of this DOD computer system may subject you
to criminal prosecution. Evidence of unauthorized use collected during
monitoring may be used for administrative, criminal, or other adverse
action. Use of this system constitutes consent to monitoring for all lawful
purposes.

Warning Mac user

[Psykechan]

Mine says:

Welcome to Darwin!

Re:Warning Mac user

[AFCArchvile]

I tweaked mine a bit:

Somebody spilled Macintosh in my BSD!

Friends don't let friends...

[BearRanger]

Ignore the MOTD.

$cat /etc/motd

Lose Windows Now! Ask me how!

$

Who logs in anymore?

[ameoba]

I'm not sure if the MOTD is a terribly useful place to put such messages these days. Most everyone's going to be using graphical workstations (either Unix or Windows) which won't show the MOTD on log. For mail they'll be using IMAP/POP/Webmail clients and, again, missing the message.

I'd think that, at most schools, bulk email would be the most effective method of communicating with students. The downside to this is that you manage to create a massive ammount of extra data to deal with.

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[linuxkrn]

Maybe you do, but many of us don't log into a GUI. Besides, I admin tons of servers, NONE of which have X or any GUI stuff installed.

Granted I use a GUI on my workstation, I spend 99% of my time in terminals.

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[HaloZero]

Hell yeah. My favorite thing about an X session with a GUI is that I can fit more than one terminal on the display.

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Have you never heard of screen?

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[grudgelord]

Most systems, from Windows to Unix allow for a pop-up MOTD in a GUI environment. Obviously shell users can get a MOTD but GUI users can recieve it as well. Additionally, it is more difficult to ignore in a GUI environment as the user must actually close the pop-up rather than letting it scoll on by, unread.

By the same token, GUIs aren't immune to network broadcast messages either. Thus, there's no reason that all users cannot be informed of an impending system shutdown at appropriate intervals prior to outages.

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[hawaiian717]

Additionally, it is more difficult to ignore in a GUI environment as the user must actually close the pop-up rather than letting it scoll on by, unread.

Of course, since users usually just click "ok" without reading the dialog box, I'm not sure what makes this any different.

Re:Who logs in anymore?

[ameoba]

As an admin, you are very much -not- a normal user, and if you need to read the MOTD to know about impending downtime, something has gone wrong.

my motd

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I hate FreeBSD ports so much...

      Do not install anything from ports. FreeBSD ports suck
            Instead, download the src and compile manually.
                                      Again, ports suck

Re:my motd

[Homestar Breadmaker]

Wow, you must be incredibly dumb to have any problems with ports. When I find something not in the ports tree, I make a port of it rather than just install it from source. That way it can be cleanly installed/upgraded/removed on as many machines as I want using the generated pkg, and it can cleanly have all dependancies auto-installed, and be depended on by other ports.

the exact text...

[kelleher]

mandated by the Audit and IT Risk Management Departments.

Not kidding...

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're reading this, I'm bouncing my balls off your wife's chin.

MOTD

[Ryan Amos]

All your bash are belong to us.

Installing Cygwin should fix that

[billstewart]

If you had Cygwin running on your Windows box, you'd have most of your favorite Unix-like utilities available, including cat, X Windows, and a wide range of other useful tools.

Re:Installing Cygwin should fix that

[masklinn]

You don't even need Cygwin, there are a few distros of GNU utils compiled for Win32.

Random message of the day

[caveman]

[caveman@marvin caveman]$ ls -l /etc/motd
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 9 Apr 21 2006 /etc/motd

That should stop the buggers logging in.

Re:Random message of the day

[amling]

To save the rest of you the time (as if you couldn't guess):

$ ls -l /dev | grep ' 1, *9'
cr--r--r-- 1 root root 1, 9 Apr 21 21:57 urandom

no way this is getting past the silly filter...

[RevDigger]

perl -e 'print(ucfirst(`hostname -s`));' | figlet -f chunky > /etc/motd

Achtung Alles Lookenskeepers!

[martinultima]

Das computermachine ist nicht für gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen, undpoppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht für gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubberkecken sichtseern keepen das cotten-pickten hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

Hey, I'm the only one who logs into the machine anyway :-)

Re:Achtung Alles Lookenskeepers!

[Anonymous Coward]

That fucking rules.

the natural choice

[eddeye]

Beware of the Leopard

gaia motd

[c0nman]

One day I can look back on this...

gaia$ cat /etc/motd
OpenBSD 3.9-current (gaia) #3: Fri Apr 21 12:38:12 CDT 2006

Don't fuck around or I'll kill you.

datacenter2, datacenter4, and datacenter5 all allowed to connect to gaia:22

if you need anything then don't ask because I don't give a fsck.

and one more thing... die

gaia$

Run Away Screaming....

[billstewart]

What an annoying site! You inflict that sort of thing on your users, and call it useful?

May the gods of Blue Mountain send you online greeting cards until you've learned the error of your ways!

Re:Run Away Screaming....

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

No no, it makes perfect sense! Someone who thinks you can be enlightened by countless quotes taken completely out of context is surely not someone who can think coherently enough to make a decent website.

Re:Run Away Screaming....

[mabu]

The site is about the content, not the design I imagine. I didn't do it, so what do I know, but the quotes are good, and they're not the sort of ones that have a different intention when excised out of context.

Anyway, the site is crap. But the daily mailing they do is what I'm really talking about. As I understand it, the site is just a tiny subset of the daily quotes that are mailed.

You report your agency?

[oneiros27]

This U.S. Government resource is for authorized use only.
If not authorized to access this resource, disconnect now.
Unauthorized use of, or access to, this resource may
subject you to disciplinary action or criminal prosecution.
By accessing and using this resource, you are consenting to
monitoring, keystroke recording, or auditing.

or

U.S. Government Public Information Exchange Resource
You have accessed a U.S. Government Resource.
This site is intended to be used by the public for information exchange.
Any attempt to modify or exploit this resource or associated information
other than for instructed use is strictly prohibited and may be punishable
under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
The Government may monitor and audit the usage of this resource.
All persons are hereby notified that use of this resource constitutes consent
for monitoring, keystroke recording, or auditing.

This is actually in the banner, rather than the MOTD -- but it's important to state that there is no expectation of privacy, so that you can't be charged under any of the privacy acts, should you log someone on your system and try to prosecute them.

here's mine, minus the image

[josepha48]

--- Are You Authorized To Use This System? ---
------ Probably Not! So Get Off My Box! ------

Moore's Law "Disk is 99% full - CleanUp" motd gone

[billstewart]

Sorry for the clunky title, but that's what I could fit in a Subject Line box.

Historically there were two common contents for motd - fortune, and a note from the administrator saying that the file system was almost full so please clean up your files, and this applied to just about any multi-user server with just about any operating system. Moore's Law has changed this for most systems I've dealt with - disk capacities have been growing rapidly and prices dropping rapidly, and disk drives really are no longer running 99% full except for individuals' PCs that are full of MP3s or videos. Sometimes you'll see messages like that from MS Exchange Mail Server operators who are running shared mailbox servers on expensive fast disks, but otherwise the disk capacity most places finally outpaces user demand.

Unfortunately, bureaucrats acting as amateur lawyers have typically replaced that message with some badly written threatening legalese drivel that has no clue about what the laws actually say; they'd be just as well off with a message that said "The Wizard says: Go away and come back tomorrow!"

DISK SPACE IS CRITICALLY LOW!

[croddy]

for a while i had a warning to the users that disk space was critically low and that they should delete any files they weren't using. but apparently all those gigs of mp3's were very important, and i was the only one who ever deleted anything. so i got a new disk for the system and removed the motd :-(

i expect it was pretty annoying. it was even RED ALL CAPITALS and i had a similar message in /etc/issue.net that was printed with every ssh, sftp, and ftp login.

what i learned was: users do not pay attention to the motd, so don't bother. also, mp3's are very important.

i suppose i should have expected this reaction. i got the idea from the motd on my school's sunos server, which had a message stating that mail space was low and that users should delete any mp2 (not mp3) files they were storing. that message was there the entire time i was enrolled. now it's on new hardware with a larger disk...

now i just have a standard "Access to this system is permitted for authorized users only" in issue.net, and mord

Rules 1-4

[sconeu]

Did you have Rule 6?

Re:Rules 1-4

[__aaxwdb6741]

What's rule 6?

My MOTD?

[inode_buddha]

My MOTD? Check out the suggested default at Bastille Linux and modify it to suit. On most recent RH-based distros you can cun-n-paste the same msg into /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net (assuming runlevel 3), so all your users see it no matter what. You might want to have your legal department parse it first just to be sure.

The default, nobody reads it anyways.

[Homestar Breadmaker]

$ cat /etc/motd
OpenBSD 3.9-beta (GENERIC) #593: Tue Jan 24 02:00:54 MST 2006

Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system.

Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system.
Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest
version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that
enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a
known fix for it exists, include that as well.

Abandon all Hope, ye who Enter Here...

[nbritton]

FreeBSD 6.1-PRERELEASE (SE7210TP1E) #0: Tue Mar 14 12:15:56 CST 2006

Welcome to FreeBSD and the wonderful world of UNIX!
                Abandon all Hope, ye who Enter Here...

If you need help, the commands; man, whatis, and whereis will help you.
For an introduction to UNIX head on over to:
                http://wks.uts.ohio-state.edu/unix_course/unix.htm l
                http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
                http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/unixhelp/

My /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net are interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much is in the /etc/motd worth sharing. However in my /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net I have a warning that I've saw long ago on some military computers and modified alittle for my sites...

NOTICE TO USERS

This computer is a Personal computer system and is the property of the [Fill in your own info here]. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized sites and law enforcement personnel, as well as to authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of authorized sites. [Fill in your own info here] decides which sites are considered authorized sites.

Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative disciplinary action and civil and criminal penalties. By continuing to use this system, you indicate your awareness of and consent to these terms and conditions of use. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the conditions stated in this warning.

who are the diskhogs

[Aaton]

If you don't already have quotas you might run into some users eating more then there fair share of disk space. Run something like this nightly from cron job and place the output in /etc/motd. Your biggest diskhogs will be known to everyone that logs in.

#!/bin/bash
# Usage: diskhog [dir] [count]
# If nothing given defaults to /home and 10

HOMES=${1:-/home}
COUNT=${2:-10}
SMALLDIV= "-----"
IGNORELIST="proc"

if [ ! -d $HOMES ] ; then
echo "$HOMES needs to be a directory. Use the full path"
exit
fi

cd $HOMES

echo "`date +%D` Disk Hogs: $HOMES"
echo "$SMALLDIV";
du -ks `ls -l | egrep -ie "^d" |egrep -iv $IGNORELIST | awk '{print $9}'` | sort -rn | head -$COUNT;
echo "$SMALLDIV";

May not be the best method but works under Linux. You might need to change the awk number if your ls doesn't output like mine.

Re:who are the diskhogs

[grudgelord]

Cool. Compliance through ridicule. I like it. While I don't have a need for it right now, I'm swiping this and adding this to my bin of swiped, nifty code. With your indulgence, of course.

Re:who are the diskhogs

[Bios_Hakr]

Now if you could just do something like this for users' network utilization...

Re: who are the diskhogs

[InitZero]

Your biggest diskhogs will be known to everyone that logs in.

        My biggest disk hogs would compete to see who could use
the most disk space.

        Matt

My motd is inspired by our beloved government...

[Bob_Geldof]

$ cat /etc/motd

THIS IS A DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COMPUTER
SYSTEM.  USE OF THE SYSTEM IMPLIES CONSENT TO
MONITORING.  ANY UNAUTHORIZED USE OF THE SYSTEM WILL
BE PROSECUTED.

$

Liberated from here at slashdot

[apachetoolbox]

~ # cat /etc/motd

Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck! May all 0ur base someday be belong
to you! May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn heaven. Give us this day our
warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe. And cut us some slack when we
act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too
pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep
the f3i off our backs, we'd appreciate it. For j00 0wn r00t on all our
b0x3n 4ever and ever, 4m3n.

secrity MOTD

[OverNeith]

i have this installed on all the machines i adminstrate. placed in /etc/motd. Also, if you change the "banner" option in SSH to point to /etc/motd, the security message will be displayed before and after authentication.



                                          A T T E N T I O N !

    This system is for the use of authorized users only.
    Individuals using this computer system without authority,
    or in excess of their authority, are subject to having all
    of their activities on this system monitored and recorded
    by system personnel. In the course of monitoring
    individuals improperly using this system, or in the course
    of system maintenance, the activities of authorized users
    may also be monitored. Anyone using this system expressly
    consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such
    monitoring reveals possible criminal activity, system
    personnel may provide the evidence of such monitoring to
    law enforcement officials.

                UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS PROHIBITED BY TITLE 18
                            UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 1030

Re:secrity MOTD

[Anonymous Coward]

> UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS PROHIBITED BY TITLE 18
> UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 1030

Oh no!
I've just shit myself

Obviously not a Python fan...

[sconeu]

There is NOOOOOOO Rule 6!

Source: Philosopher's song sketch

Wow....

[renjipanicker]

Having a slow day on Slashdot, are we?

A nice simple one

[Trogre]

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

A stupid disclaimer

[metamatic]

The company requires me to put a big ugly disclaimer in the motd. So, immediately afterwards I add the output of `fortune disclaimer`, which was my first contribution to Debian.

Think twice, type once

[timelorde]

Way, way back in the day, my .logout ran the UNIX fortune program, which sometimes coughed up something witty for me to read as I logged out.

One afternoon, I guess I was feeling a bit giddy, as I had arranged to take the following day off. The fortune program was also in a fine mood, and I thought so much of its output that I just had to log back in and preserve it in the MOTD.

Imagine my surprise the next morning at being rudely awakened by a call from the "senior" sysadmin. Seems the ol' Sun 3 was scaring the users with an error message whenever they logged in, and my superior couldn't find it anywhere in the man pages. It took all my willpower to keep from bursting out laughing.

The message?

    Error: /dev/null is full. Please empty the bit bucket.

Depends on the box, but today...

[luvcannon]

Welcome! Now, leave if you know what's good for you.

motd

[delysid-x]

FreeBSD 6.1-BETA3 (FANG) #0: Fri Mar 10 18:41:21 UTC 2006

Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue, Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork!

A MOTD from slashdot

[ajdlinux]

Set up a cron job to run this shell script:

#!/bin/bash
lynx -head -dump http://slashdot.org/ | egrep "X-Bender|X-Fry" | cut -d : -f 2 > /etc/motd


It uses a quote hidden in the HTTP headers of every slashdot page.

You can change that?

[toadlife]

FreeBSD 6.1-RC (mykernel) #0: Sun Apr 16 02:58:35 PDT 2006

Welcome to FreeBSD!

Before seeking technical support, please use the following resources:

o Security advisories and updated errata information for all releases are
      at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ - always consult the ERRATA section
      for your release first as it's updated frequently.

o The Handbook and FAQ documents are at http://www.freebsd.org/ and,
      along with the mailing lists, can be searched by going to
      http://www.freebsd.org/search/. If the doc distribution has
      been installed, they're also available formatted in /usr/share/doc.

If you still have a question or problem, please take the output of
`uname -a', along with any relevant error messages, and email it
as a question to the questions@FreeBSD.org mailing list. If you are
unfamiliar with FreeBSD's directory layout, please refer to the hier(7)
manual page. If you are not familiar with manual pages, type `man man'.

You may also use sysinstall(8) to re-enter the installation and
configuration utility. Edit /etc/motd to change this login announcement.

Default Bastille MOTD

[vlad_grigorescu]

Recommended by the Bastille hardening script, so it's easier to prosecute offenders:

                       ---NOTICE TO USERS---

This computer system is the private property of Vlad Grigorescu, whether
individual, corporate or government.  It is for authorized use only.
Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit
expectation of privacy.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be
intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and
disclosed to your employer, to authorized site, government, and law
enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of government
agencies, both domestic and foreign.

By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring,
recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the
discretion of such personnel or officials.  Unauthorized or improper use
of this system may result in civil and criminal penalties and
administrative or disciplinary action, as appropriate. By continuing to
use this system you indicate your awareness of and consent to these terms
and conditions of use. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the
conditions stated in this warning.

My previous one...

[Kronovohr]

This was what mine was before I upgraded:

Dis beez my box.
It don' be real fast.
But if you fuck wit it,
I be kickin' yo ass.
        -- Management

Re:My previous one...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

HEY! I'm the script kiddie who put that there. You're violating my coPYRIghT by posting it here. Prepare to die.

cbosgd /etc/motd

[shadowspar]

I found this one in a fortune file somewhere.

You swing at the Sun. You miss. The Sun swings. He hits you with a 575MB disk! You read the 575MB disk. It is written in an alien tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes. You throw the 575MB disk at the Sun. You hit! The Sun must repair your eyes. The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your 130MB disk! He has defeated the 130MB disk! The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your Ethernet board! He has defeated your Ethernet board! You read a scroll of "postpone until Monday at 9 AM". Everything goes dark...

Always fun at uni

[Hyperhaplo]

If someone left their terminal open (and we had nice 19" sun monitors too - Solaris 5 box back then) it was granted that for a first offense someone would change your background picture or similar.

For a second offense your window scheme would be reset or changed to a very garlish effect.. think neon pink on aqua. A message may be left in a text window noting that the terminal was left unlocked.

For people who continually left their terminal unlocked when they left the room the usual treatment was to randomly rebind keys. eg:
bind vi exit .. and so on. They would also find that their logon script had 'exit' at the end of it (force quit them) :) They would then have to use FTP to grab their .cshrc, change it and put it back :)

When you do this (after the third time) you'd usually leave a logon message for them (similar to MOTD) noting that they have left their terminal unlocked (again!!) :P - but only if you were a nice person. Those random key bindings could be a lot of fun.

Rules for doing this:
1) Don't ever get caught (I can't remember offhand of anyone ever been caught - it only takes a couple of minutes to apply the education needed)
2) Don't ever let someone else know it was you that did it (in our labs you didn't say who did the reconfigure.. mostly because *anyone* would have :P)
3) Don't ever do it to someone.. and then leave your terminal unlocked. It's just asking for it :)
4) Don't actually damage their files, delete stuff or do anything really bad

We had lots of fun at uni.

Re:Always fun at uni

[Anonymous Coward]

We had lots of fun at uni.

Sadly, these days those sorts of pranks would get you expelled and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for hacking and cybercrime and, you know, being against the generic "us" and with the terrorists.

In fairness, these harsh measures are partly to blame on the few bad apples who WOULD damage files, delete stuff and do "bad", (we've all crossed that line at one point and gone a bit too far -even if not necessarily with computers- as it is human nature) but it is unfortunate that the crackdown has taken so much of the spirit of fun and humor from the industry.

Re:Always fun at uni

[onkelonkel]

At my last workplace, if you left your PC logged on and walked away without locking it, the other techies would send an email for you, coming from your email account, and bearing your signature. Typical topics included "I am a women trapped in a man's body", "the boss is a jerk and can kiss my ass" and the always popular "coming out of the closet". Typically this would be broadcast to the entire department.

Back when I was a sys admin

[hey!]

I had a number of quotation books, as well as some poetry books (haiku works well), and spent a few minutes each week picking out fun, interesting or (carefully ) apropos quotations.

It didn't take much time, it was fun, and it gave the message a bit of a personal touch. Also, if I needed to announce something, I could be sure that people would be looking to see what the message was. YMMV, not every place has a style that accomdates whimsy. As they say in Japan: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." You can guess where I ran across that one.

I think that announcing upcoming events is a good idea, except that the less personal the message seems, the more people are inclinded to ignore it.

My 2 cents

[cmarks03]

I work for my school's Engineering computer department (more or less separate from the rest of the university), and our MOTD is strictly reserved for info about our computer systems (network outages, lab replacements, A/C not being turned on yet, et cetera... though one time it said Happy St. Patrick's Day). For the general event announcements, our Windows clients have text dynamically placed on the desktop - not an active desktop thing, but a program that overlays the announcements over our normal "no food drinks or smoking in the labs" desktop whenever someone logs in as part of the logon scripts. Our 3 solaris labs don't say anything... yet. That's one of my projects. We just did our Solaris 10 rollout a couple months ago, with Java Desktop (Gnome). So that will probably make my life easier than if it was done using CDE...

Your sig

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

My other car is first.

LISP?

Re:Your sig

[jrockway]

Yup. Which means I should also post this:


cat /etc/motd

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable /etc/motd)
    eval(/etc/motd)
    eval-last-sexp-1(nil)
    eval-last-sexp(nil)
    call-interactively(eval-last-sexp)

Re:Your sig

[locoluis]

? cat /etc/motd
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO cat
?

And from the same machine:

READY
cat /etc/motd
ERROR - cat /etc/motd

Re: Broken english version

[atomic-penguin]

ATTENTION

This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished
the blinkenlights.

my motd

[mattyrobinson69]

If you shouldn't be here, fuck off. Thats on my home machine, webserver has some legal crap (monitoring, etc), and my dev machine says 'Welcome to the fone-me.com SVN server'

Re: Broken english version

[martinultima]

Aber ich habe lieber das deutsches Blinkenlights :-)