Linux display or change a pre-login message - /etc/issue file
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
Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter or RSS feed to get all updates.
You can Email this page to a friend.
Related Other Helpful FAQs:
- How can I change the message of the day on my Linux server?
- How to Change the vsftp or vsftpd server banner message
- Howto: Changing Linux Login Shell
- Linux deny or block user login
- Change the From: email address in PHP mail()
Discussion on This FAQ
Leave a Reply
We encourage your comments, and suggestions. But please stay on topic, be polite, and avoid spam. Thank you very much for stopping by our site!
Tags: escape_code, etc_issue_file, login_banner, vi_command
July 31st, 2007 at 10:02 am
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?