Adding a custom MOTD message.

For example, let’s say we wanted to use figlet to make a nice server banner like this:

figlet Server 1

The output of that would look something like this:

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

For Ubuntu 12.04, open up the /etc/motd.tail tail file and just add that text to the file:

sudo nano /etc/motd.tail

For Ubuntu 14.04, open up the /etc/motd.tail tail file and just add that text to the file:

sudo nano /etc/motd

Save it and that message will show up during your next login to the server.

Clean up the advertising and related notices in MOTD.

Check the contents of the MOTD directory:

sudo ls -la /etc/update-motd.d/

total 44
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Jan 12 14:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 117 root root 12288 Jan 15 11:17 ..
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root  1220 Jul 14  2011 00-header
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root  1358 Jul 14  2011 10-help-text
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    46 Jan 12 14:44 50-landscape-sysinfo -> /usr/share/landscape/landscape-sysinfo.wrapper
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root   149 May 15  2012 90-updates-available
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root   129 Apr 19  2011 91-release-upgrade
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root   142 May 15  2012 98-fsck-at-reboot
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root   144 May 15  2012 98-reboot-required
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root  1158 Oct 21  2010 99-footer

Get rid of the symbolic link to 50-landscape-sysinfo and similar for cloud installs:

sudo rm -f /etc/update-motd.d/50-landscape-sysinfo
sudo rm -f /etc/update-motd.d/51-cloudguest

Comment out the content of these MOTD scripts:

sudo nano /etc/update-motd.d/90-updates-available
sudo nano /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade
sudo nano /etc/update-motd.d/95-hwe-eol