The aim of this project is to give some informations when you log into a server through SSH.

Example:

   ___  ___ _ ____   _____ _ __
  / __|/ _ \ '__\ \ / / _ \ '__|
  \__ \  __/ |   \ V /  __/ |
  |___/\___|_|    \_/ \___|_|


  Debian GNU/Linux 8.4 (jessie) (kernel 3.16.0-4-amd64)


  System information as of Fri Apr 22 10:02:57 2016

  System load:  2.74                 Processes:           167
  Memory usage: 98%                  Users logged in:     1
  Swap usage:   31%
  Disk Usage:
    Usage of /                       : 37.0% of 19.18GB
    Usage of /boot                   : 36.6% of 0.11GB
    Usage of /home                   : 11.1% of 501.60GB
  Inode Usage:
    Usage of /                       : 12.7% of 1286144
    Usage of /boot                   : 1.1% of 31232
    Usage of /home                   : 0.1% of 33406976

  Logged in users:
  user       from laptop.example.org        at Fri Apr 22 09:09:09 2016

No mail.
Last login: Fri Apr 22 09:23:01 2016 from laptop.example.org

Warning This is Debian and Debian-related distributions only.

You need to install some packages:

apt-get install figlet lsb-release python-utmp bc

Optionnally, you can install needrestart which is used to show a message if your server need a reboot (main reason (and the only one I know): you have upgraded your kernel). If you don't install needrestart, it will work, but you won't be warned about the need for a reboot. needrestart warns you about services that need to be restarted too (but is slower than checkrestart for that, see below).

You can optionnally install debian-goodies which provides checkrestart, which will be used to warn you about services that need to be restarted. Relying on needrestart for that is slow (±7 seconds) while checkrestart do it faster (less than one second).

NB: if you use Debian 11 Bullseye, install python3-utmp instead of python-utmp and change python to python3 in update-motd.d/20-system-info and update-motd.d/sysinfo.py:

sed -e "s/python/python3/" -i update-motd.d/20-system-info update-motd.d/sysinfo.py

cp -r update-motd.d/ /etc
rm /etc/motd
ln -s /var/run/motd /etc/motd

Just create a /etc/update-motd.d/hushlogin file containing the names of the users, like:

alice
bob

You will find a working salt formula in init.sls.

cd /srv/salt
git clone https://framagit.org/luc/dynamic-motd.git motd
salt your_server state.sls motd

GPLv2. Have a look at the LICENSE file.

• Dustin Kirkland, the guy behind the Ubuntu dynamic motd (I took some scripts from Ubuntu and stole inspiration too :D)
• https://github.com/maxis1718/update-motd.d for the skeleton
• https://github.com/jnweiger/landscape-sysinfo-mini for the python script (slightly modified)