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.
