/etc/issue

[Nobody's Hero]

I am using /etc/issue to get our security message out to the general public, via ftp and telnet. No problem here, however, is there a way to display the message in bold or underline using 'tput smul'?

10x
RPM

[John Poff · Accepted solution]

Hi RPM,

There might be a way to do it, but I'm not sure how it would get done. The /etc/issue banner is displayed by the telnetd daemon, so my guess is that it is just reading in the issue file and writing it out to the display. I don't think embedding the tput commands in it would help as those actually need to be executed.

You might be able to embed some escape sequences for the type of terminal emulation you use [vt100, xterm, etc.] to do bold, underline, etc., but then it seems like that would only work for one type of terminal and not for another.

Interesting idea.

JP

[Shannon Petry]

Well, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that your question is answered very easily.

The bad news is the answer, which is no.

There are several standards which require daemons to ignore control characters, as many terminals just dont support them. Best advice is to use a bit of character graphics to brighten your screen a bit. I.E.

<*>-----<*>-----<*>-----<*>
| My company name |
<*>_____________________<*>
| Some security text |
| goes in here... |
| <(O)> Evil eye :^O |
<*>-----<*>-----<*>-----<*>



Regards,
Shannon