motd(5)

🎀 motd(5) — the girlies' guide to the message of the day 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to motd from section 5 of the manual (that's the File Formats girlies, not the commands girlies, iykyk) ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

motd — message of the day 🗒️💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So here's the tea: the contents of /etc/motd get displayed by login(1) after a successful login but just before it executes the login shell. That's the whole vibe — you log in, the box yells at you for a sec, and then your shell shows up. Main character energy, honestly. 👑

And yes, the abbreviation "motd" stands for "message of the day" 💫 and this file has been traditionally used for exactly that. iconic behaviour, no notes. The reason it's this and not a mass email situation is very practical ngl: it requires much less disk space than mail to all users. efficiency queen 🍓

so like… it's literally just a text file that says hi. and it's been doing that for decades. ate. 🔥

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/motd — the file itself, the one and only 💜

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• login(1) — the thing that shows you your motd 🫶
• issue(5) — sibling file, different pre-login moment ✨

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and that's the whole page bestie, we're done 🎀 this was pulled from Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2025-05-17 — go touch some grass, or better yet go write something cute in /etc/motd 💖💅🧚