Message of the day

[vaman]

On hpux 11.0, how can I give message when a user logs in first time, & if I need to restrict to a perticular group a perticular message, how can I do that

[Mark Greene_1]

You can edit the file /etc/motd with whatever you want. Legal disclaimers are a popular choice here, as this is displayed to all logins.

To restrict by group, you could edit the /etc/profile to print a message on certain conditions, such as a login IDs group affiliation (man groups for more info).

mark

[Franky_1]

Hi,

you can use the news command which displays contents of files under /var/news upon login
Read man news for more info

Regards

Franky

[Simon Hargrave · Accepted solution]

The default profile displays the contents of /etc/motd for this very purpose. Put your contents in this file.

The part in /etc/profile that calls it looks like this: -

# Message of the day

if [ -r /etc/motd ]
then
cat /etc/motd
fi

To restrict it to a certain group, eg GID 110, you could modify this to

# Message of the day

if [ -r /etc/motd -a $(id -g) -eq 110 ]
then
cat /etc/motd
fi

If you wanted different messages for different groups, you could have: -

# Message of the day

gid=$(id -g)

if [ -r /etc/motd.$gid ]
then
cat /etc/motd.$gid
fi

Then have /etc/motd.100 , /etc/motd.110 etc.

[vaman]

I do not have /etc/motd still I get some message every time I login, it is not from/etc/profile or.profile.
The messages are like last successful login, last unsuccessful login & some notice,
Can i know where it is comming from?

[Simon Hargrave]

The last successful login messages etc are generated by the "login" process upon successful authentication, before the profiles are executed.

Not sure what you mean by "notice"? Perhaps you mean a banner displayed before the login: prompt? If so then check /etc/inetd.conf for the telnet service. It may have -b /etc/issue which means it displays the contents of that file before login.

[vaman]

Hello Simon,

Yes I mean banners, last login info displayed before I get prompt, but it is not from /etc/issue as I checked the contents of that file,
Also I am not using telnet but ssh

[vaman]

IF I am using SSH to connect hpux system, what is the file that will give me banner before shell prompt

[Mark Greene_1]

sshd will display /etc/motd, unless disabled in the config file /etc/sshd.config or $HOME/.ssh/config. Alternate files may be specified in $HOME/.ssh/environment, $HOME/.ssh/rc or other files in that directory path, depending on your ssh implementation.

mark

[Cheryl Griffin]

You might be looking for /etc/issue except /etc/issue will not display a message to users whom telnet into the machine.