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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- Last Updated: 9-20-07
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
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?
You are talking about the GUI (graphical user interface) and that depends on the distro you are using. If you are using Ubuntu (with gnome) you can play with compiz to change how the mouse and windows, and all that stuff behaves, if you are in a distro that uses kde, like kubuntu, slackware, etc you will have to look at kde window manager. Anyway read about window managers.