[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#437176: current state of affairs of /etc/motd

[Antoine Beaupré]

I have tried to write up an article explaining the current state of
affairs of /etc/motd in Debian (and other distributions) here:

http://wiki.debian.org/motd

One thing to understand is that Ubuntu, while it had an "update-motd"
package for a short while, now generates their /etc/motd file through
pam (!), through /etc/update-motd.d.

The fun thing is that Debian also ships with that patch: the difference
is that it doesn't create that directory, so the scripts don't run and
the directory is ignored. But right now, if you create that directory
and put scripts into it, they will be used to generate an /etc/motd
file, on the fly, wich you scripts.

So this begs the question: what would `update-motd` do? Would it run
things from `/etc/update-motd.d` or just the hardcoded stuff in
/etc/init.d/bootlogs?

It seems we need to settle on how we want to deal with this now: either
we drop the Ubuntu patch of update-motd.d or we expand it to put our
scripts there and run them through update-motd and bootlogs.

Furthermore, i believe the current behavior of *not* updating this on
login is good, since it kept us away from two severe local root security
issues. So if we do ship with update-motd.d, I think we should add
noupdate to the pam_motd line.

Oh and through all that, the documentation needs to be updated because
the manpages do not talk about that directory at all right now.

Just my two cents.

A.

-- 
Advertisers, not governments, are the primary censors of media content 
in the United States today.
                        - C. Edwin Baker
                        http://www.ad-mad.co.uk/quotes/freespeech.htm
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