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Linux display or change a pre-login message - /etc/issue file

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: September 20, 2007]

Q. How can I configure or change the Virtual Console login to display a pre-login message?

A. The file /etc/issue is a text file which contains a message or system identification to be printed before the login prompt. It may contain various @char and \char sequences, if supported by getty.

Just open file /etc/issue and change the text as per your requirements.

Procedure to change /etc/issue - pre login file

Login as the root user. Open a file
# vi /etc/issue
Append new text as follows:
Welcome to nixCraft Labs!
Today is \d \t @ \n

Save and close the file. \d, \t or \n will expand as follows on run time.

/etc/issue - escape code

The issue-file (/etc/issue or the file set with the -f option) may contain certain escape codes to display the system name, date and time etc. All escape codes consist of a backslash (\) immediately followed by one of the letters explained below.

  • \b : Insert the baudrate of the current line.
  • \d : Insert the current date.
  • \s : Insert the system name, the name of the operating system.
  • \l : Insert the name of the current tty line.
  • \m : Insert the architecture identifier of the machine, eg. i486
  • \n : Insert the nodename of the machine, also known as the hostname.
  • \o : Insert the domainname of the machine.
  • \r : Insert the release number of the OS, eg. 1.1.9.
  • \t : Insert the current time.
  • \u : Insert the number of current users logged in.
  • \U : Insert the string "1 user" or " users" where is the number of current users logged in.
  • \v : Insert the version of the OS, eg. the build-date etc.

See also

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Discussion on This FAQ

  1. vinayak Says:

    can i please get a way to modify the appearences on linux?
    any thing related to changing the effects of the icons ..changing the mouse pointer colour..etc?

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