Can't read /etc/nologin message

[Ed Hon]

The /etc/nologin message flashes by too quickly for any human to read it. How can I pause it for a few seconds.

[Patrick Wallek]

Just put a sleep command after you cat /etc/nologin. I do a 'sleep 5' in my scripts.

[S.K. Chan]

You should be able to insert a sleep command before the nologin is display.
eg: sleep 5
==> 5 second sleep

[Ed Hon]

My understanding is that the contents of the /etc/nologin file are merely displayed on the screen during the login process. How can do I put a sleep command in this file, when it is only displayed?

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Ed,

You are apparantly setting NOLOGIN=1 in /etc/default/security. I believe you are right in that the contents of that file are displayed after the system generated message:

Only superusers are allowed to login at this time due to the presence
of the file /etc/nologin and NOLOGIN option set in /etc/default/security

Using that method, if the screen is "cleared" automatically to post the login prompt, then you are probably out of luck. I have no such problem using telnet and rlogin but I don't have a direct connect terminal to try it on.

In the past, before HP added nologin support in /etc/security/default, some have coded their own /etc/nologin logic in /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login. You could verify the user isn't root (or whomever you want) and exit after displaying a message and sleeping. I don't know if CDE is affected by that or not.

Just an idea.

Darrell