[Bug 785901] Re: motd(5) mentions motd.tail which isn't avaialble anymore

Florian Diesch diesch at spamfence.net
Fri Jun 17 17:18:17 UTC 2011


Alice want to change the motd on her server. The manpage motd(5) tells
her that "the  contents of this file are regenerated upon every system
boot based on the contents of /etc/motd.tail" and links to motd.tail(5).
That manpage tells her that " /etc/motd.tail is  the file to edit
permanent changes to the message of the day"  and "The  initiation
script /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh prepends a line containing information
about the  system  to  /etc/motd.tail  and  stores  the resulting  file
in  /var/run/motd".

Alice can't find neither /etc/motd.tail nor etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh on
her system but although the last reboot was 3 month ago she still gets
up to date information about packages to be updated at login. Alice
doesn't think the manpage is helpful in any way.

==================================================================

Bob want to change the motd on his server. The manpage motd(5) tells him
that on Ubuntu the motd is dynamically created by the  update-motd
framework  and links to update-motd(5). In  update-motd(5) he reads that
"Executable  scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/* are executed by pam_motd(8)
as the root user at each login" which is exactly what he wanted to know.
Bob thinks the manpage is really helpful.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/785901

Title:
  motd(5) mentions motd.tail which isn't avaialble anymore

Status in “manpages” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: manpages

  motd(5) says: "The  contents of this file are regenerated upon every
  system boot based on the contents of /etc/motd.tail." This is not true
  anymore, as Ubuntu uses the update-motd framework. Any reference to
  motd.tail should be replaced with a reference to the update-motd
  framework or update-motd(5). The manpage for motd.tail should be
  removed.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: manpages 3.27-1ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Fri May 20 19:49:34 2011
  Dependencies:
   
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=de_DE:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/zsh
  SourcePackage: manpages
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-30 (20 days ago)

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