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dynmotd

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Dynamic MOTD (Message of the Day) for Linux distributions with distribution-specific color coding and cloud provider support.

Features

  • Distribution-specific colors based on official logo colors (auto-disabled on non-TTY output and when NO_COLOR is set)
  • Cloud provider detection: AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack — detected at login, not install time
  • OS-specific modules: RHEL, Rocky Linux, Raspberry Pi, WSL
  • Virtualization detection: KVM, VMware, Xen, Docker, LXC, Kubernetes, etc. (via systemd-detect-virt)
  • Disk usage for all real mountpoints
  • Last login per user
  • Sysadmin notices: broadcast messages with dynmotd-notify
  • User exclusion: Hide MOTD for specific users
  • Multi-shell login hooks: bash, zsh, fish
  • Extensible: Add custom scripts in /etc/dynmotd.d/
  • Fortune integration: Random quotes (optional)

Supported Distributions

Distribution Color
Ubuntu Orange (#E95420)
Debian Wine Red (#A80030)
RHEL/CentOS Red (#EE0000)
Rocky Linux Green (#10B981)
AlmaLinux Dark Blue (#0F4266)
Oracle Linux Red (#F80000)
Fedora Blue (#3C6EB4)
SUSE Green (#73BA25)
Arch Linux Blue (#1793D1)
Manjaro Green (#35BF5C)
Alpine Linux Blue (#0D597F)
Raspbian Raspberry (#C51A4A)

Requirements

Standard tools (available on most Linux distributions):

  • curl
  • awk
  • xargs
  • basename
  • grep
  • lsb-release (for Debian-based)
  • fortune (optional)

Installation

Automatic Installation

sudo ./install.sh

This will:

  1. Install dynmotd, dynmotd-notify, dynmotd-exclude to /usr/local/bin/
  2. Create symlink dm for quick access
  3. Wire up login hooks for every shell detected on the system:
    • bash → /etc/profile.d/dynmotd.sh
    • zsh → block appended to /etc/zsh/zprofile (or /etc/zprofile)
    • fish → /etc/fish/conf.d/dynmotd.fish (login-only guard)
  4. Create /etc/dynmotd.conf for user exclusion
  5. Create /etc/dynmotd.d/ for custom scripts
  6. Install all cloud modules (detection happens at runtime, not install time)
  7. Auto-detect OS-specific modules (Raspberry Pi, RHEL/Rocky tuned-adm)

Manual Installation

# 1. Disable default MOTD (optional)
sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Set: PrintMotd no

# 2. Disable PAM MOTD (if applicable)
sudo vi /etc/pam.d/login
# Comment: # session optional pam_motd.so

# 3. Install dynmotd
sudo cp dynmotd /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/dynmotd

# 4. Set up auto-display on login
echo "/usr/local/bin/dynmotd" | sudo tee /etc/profile.d/dynmotd.sh
sudo chmod 644 /etc/profile.d/dynmotd.sh

# 5. Create custom scripts directory
sudo mkdir -p /etc/dynmotd.d

Uninstallation

sudo ./uninstall.sh

Configuration

Disabling the MOTD

Two mechanisms exist — admin-wide and per-user.

Admin exclusion (requires root) — manages /etc/dynmotd.conf:

sudo dynmotd-exclude add jenkins
sudo dynmotd-exclude add serviceaccount
sudo dynmotd-exclude list
sudo dynmotd-exclude remove jenkins

Or edit /etc/dynmotd.conf directly (one username per line, # for comments).

Self opt-out (any user) — toggles ~/.dynmotd-disable:

dynmotd-exclude mute      # disable MOTD for yourself
dynmotd-exclude unmute    # re-enable
dynmotd-exclude status    # check current state

Either mechanism suppresses the MOTD for the matching user.

Broadcast Notices

Use dynmotd-notify (installed alongside dynmotd) to show sysadmin messages to every user at login:

sudo dynmotd-notify add "maintenance tonight at 20:00"
sudo dynmotd-notify add --expires 2026-05-01 "freeze until May 1"
sudo dynmotd-notify list
sudo dynmotd-notify remove 20260418-093512-42
sudo dynmotd-notify clear

Notices are stored as plain-text files in /var/lib/dynmotd/notices/ and auto-hidden past their optional expiration date.

Custom Scripts

Place custom scripts in /etc/dynmotd.d/ with .sh extension. Scripts are executed in alphabetical order.

Naming convention:

  • 00_*.sh - OS-specific info
  • 01_*.sh - Cloud provider info
  • 99_*.sh - Miscellaneous (fortune, etc.)

Available variables (exported by dynmotd):

COLOR_COLUMN    # Bold formatting
COLOR_VALUE     # Distribution color
RESET_COLORS    # Reset to default
DISTRO_COLOR    # Raw distribution color code

Example custom script (/etc/dynmotd.d/50_docker.sh):

if command -v docker > /dev/null; then
  DOCKER_STATUS=$(systemctl is-active docker 2>/dev/null || echo "not installed")
  echo -e "===== DOCKER ==================================================================
 ${COLOR_COLUMN}${COLOR_VALUE}- Status${RESET_COLORS}.............: ${DOCKER_STATUS}"
fi

Cloud Provider Support

Provider Detection Method Info Displayed
AWS IMDSv2 token External IP, Instance ID/Type, Zone
Azure Metadata API External IP, Resource Group, VM ID/Size, Location
GCP Metadata header External IP, Project, Machine Type, Image, VPC, Zone, Scopes
OpenStack /openstack/ endpoint External IP, Instance ID/Type, Hostname, Project, Zone

Detection runs at login time, not at install — snapshotted/migrated VMs automatically pick up the new provider. A non-cloud host pays only ~1s (single reachability probe) at login. All cloud metadata requests have a 2-second timeout.

Project Structure

dynmotd/
├── dynmotd              # Main script
├── dynmotd-notify       # CLI for broadcast notices
├── dynmotd-exclude      # CLI for per-user MOTD opt-out / admin exclusion
├── install.sh           # Installation script
├── uninstall.sh         # Uninstallation script
├── 00_cloud_detect.sh   # Runtime cloud-provider detection (shared)
├── 00_notices.sh        # Displays sysadmin notices at login
├── 00_raspberry_pi.sh   # Raspberry Pi module
├── 00_rhel.sh           # RHEL/Oracle Linux module
├── 00_rocky.sh          # Rocky Linux module
├── 00_wsl.sh            # Windows Subsystem for Linux module
├── 01_aws.sh            # AWS EC2 metadata (self-gated)
├── 01_azure.sh          # Azure VM metadata (self-gated)
├── 01_gcp.sh            # GCP Compute Engine metadata (self-gated)
├── 01_openstack.sh      # OpenStack metadata (self-gated)
├── 99_fortune.sh        # Fortune quotes
└── example/             # Example configurations

Sample Output

===============================================================================
 - Hostname...........: myserver (192.168.1.100)
 - OS version.........: Rocky Linux 9.2 (Blue Onyx)
 - Kernel release.....: 5.14.0-284.11.1.el9_2.x86_64
 - Users..............: Currently 2 user(s) logged on
===============================================================================
 - CPUs...............: 4 x GenuineIntel/Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU @ 2.80GHz
 - Load average.......: 0.15 - 0.10 - 0.05 (1-5-15 min)
 - Memory.............: 16Gi - 4.2Gi - 10Gi (total-used-free)
 - Swap...............: 2Gi - 0B - 2Gi (total-used-free)
 - Processes..........: 156 running - 2 background - 0 zombies
 - System uptime......: 45 days 12 hours 30 minutes 15 seconds
===== ROCKY LINUX INFO ========================================================
 - Tuned profile......: virtual-guest
===== GCP INSTANCE METADATA ===================================================
 - External IP........: 34.56.78.90
 - Project ID.........: my-project-123
 - Machine Type.......: e2-medium
 - Image..............: rocky-linux-9-v20230615
 - Preemptible........: FALSE
 - VPC................: default
 - Zone...............: us-central1-a
 - Additional Scopes..: [compute.readonly]
===== FORTUNE =================================================================
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
                -- Alan Kay
===============================================================================

Credits

This project is a fork of Neutrollized/dynmotd.

Original author: Neutrollized - Thanks for the original work!

Maintained by: StackOps

What's new in this fork

  • Distribution-specific color coding based on official logo colors
  • OpenStack cloud provider support
  • Rocky Linux and Alpine Linux support
  • Runtime cloud detection (works on snapshotted/migrated VMs)
  • Multi-shell login hooks (bash, zsh, fish)
  • Broadcast notices system (dynmotd-notify)
  • Per-user and admin MOTD exclusion (dynmotd-exclude)
  • Virtualization, disk, last-login rows
  • NO_COLOR / non-TTY color suppression
  • Exported color variables for custom scripts
  • Timeout on all cloud metadata requests
  • Improved error handling and code consistency

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Dynamic MOTD for RHEL/Debian-based Linux distros

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