motd(5)

motd5

Message of the day

Overview

The contents of /etc/motd are displayed by login(1) after a successful login but just before it executes the login shell.

The abbreviation "motd" stands for "message of the day", and this file has been traditionally used for exactly that (it requires much less disk space than mail to all users).

Files

/etc/motd

Releases

19 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 15 times.

  1. 1.1–1.2
  2. 1.3–2.1
  3. 2.2
  4. 3.0
  5. 3.1
  6. 4.0
  7. 5.0
  8. 6.0
  9. 7
  10. 8
  11. 9
  12. 10
  13. 11
  14. 12
  15. 13
  16. Arch

From man-pages 6.19-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.