Control: tag -1 +patch
Hi,
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 02:07:36PM +0100, Stuart Prescott wrote:
Package: manpages
Version: 3.42-1
Severity: normal
The handling of /etc/motd in wheezy has changed appreciably compared to
squeeze. It would be great if motd(5) and motd.tail(5) could be updated
accordingly for wheezy.
Thanks for your report.
The relevant changelog entry is:
sysvinit (2.88dsf-24) experimental; urgency=low
[ Roger Leigh ]
* initscripts:
- Don't generate or touch /etc/motd. Instead, the dynamic part of
/etc/motd is created as /run/motd.dynamic, leaving /etc/motd
entirely under the control of the system administrator. If
/etc/motd is a symlink to /run/motd, /etc/motd.tail is moved
back to /etc/motd. Closes: #353229, #624391, #668307. /etc/motd
is not removed if initscripts is purged, since it's not owned by
initscripts.
- By default, /run/motd is just the output of uname, preserving the
existing behaviour. However, should the administrator wish to
include dynamic information in the motd, they may write scripts
to update /run/motd.dynamic as they please. Closes: #437176.
- motd generation is split from bootlogs into a separate motd
init script.
Looking at /etc/init.d/motd, I think references to /run/motd above should
actually be /run/motd.dynamic. motd.tail(5) can just be deleted.
Here is a patch I intend to apply to motd(5) for 3.44 (that upstream released
yesterday), comments are welcome.
It also mentions that pam_motd is used to display the motd, it's no longer
login(1). (that specific change may be upstreamed, but I didn't check other
distribs behaviour yet).
--
Simon Paillard
diff --git a/man5/motd.5 b/man5/motd.5
index dc3abe1..8083d51 100644
--- a/man5/motd.5
+++ b/man5/motd.5
@@ -28,26 +28,29 @@
motd \- message of the day
.SH DESCRIPTION
The contents of \fI/etc/motd\fP are displayed by
-.BR login (1)
+.BR pam_motd (8)
after a successful login but just before it executes the login shell.
The abbreviation motd stands for message of the day, and this file
has been traditionally used for exactly that (it requires much less disk
space than mail to all users).
-On Debian GNU/Linux this file is a symbolic link pointing to
-.IR /var/run/motd .
-The contents of this file are regenerated upon every system boot
-based on the contents of
-.IR /etc/motd.tail .
+On Debian GNU/Linux, the content of
+.I /run/motd.dynamic
+is also displayed.
+This file is generated by
+.I /etc/init.d/motd
+at boot.
.SH FILES
.I /etc/motd
.br
-.I /etc/motd.tail
+.I /run/motd.dynamic
+.br
+.I /etc/init.d/motd
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR login (1),
-.BR motd.tail (5),
.BR issue (5)
+.BR pam_motd(8)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux
.I man-pages
