Re: rotating motd

From: Robert Storey (y2kbug_at_ms25.hinet.net)
Date: 05/31/03

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    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 10:40:25 +0800
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org

    > A trivial question, but a question nonetheless! My FreeBSD /etc/motd is
    > a static and rather boring file. I recall that when I used to login to
    > my Slackware machine, it spruced things up a bit by offering some sort
    > of rotating motd, which would spit out a random quote or joke instead of
    > the same ol' static message. Is there a way to simulate this in
    > FreeBSD? Unfortunately, 'man motd' does little more than state the
    > obvious, and describe a method by which to surpress the motd altogether.
    > This, of course, occurs to me as I ssh into my home machine from work!
    > Thanks,
    > ~John

    As Adam pointed out, "fortune" is what you want. I assume it's available
    for FBSD (can't check right now as I'm at a Linux box). I don't think you
    can run fortune from /etc/motd file. Install the one word command
    "fortune" in the run command file for whatever shell you are using. Since
    I use bash, that's file .bashrc. This will cause fortune to give you a
    message every time you log in, including every time you open an Xterm. It
    might drive you crazy after awhile.

    regards,
    Robert
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