source: postlfs/config/logon.xml@ f45b1953

<sect1 id="postlfs-config-logon">
<?dbhtml filename="logon.html" dir="postlfs"?>
<title>Customising your logon (/etc/issue)</title>

<para>When you first boot up your new LFS system, the logon screen will
be nice and plain (as it should be in a bare-bones system).  Many people
however, will want their system to display some information in the logon
message.  This can be accomplished using the 
file <filename>/etc/issue</filename>.</para>

<para>The <filename>/etc/issue</filename> file is a plain text file
which will also accept certain Escape sequences (see below) in order to
insert information about the system.  There is also the file
<filename>issue.net</filename> which can be used when logging on remotely.  
SSH however, will only use it if you set the option in the 
configuration file and will also <emphasis>not</emphasis> interpret the 
escape sequences as shown below.</para>

<para>One of the most common things which people want to do is to clear
the screen at each logon.  The easiest way of doing that is to put a
"clear" escape into /etc/issue.  A simple way of doing this is to do
<userinput>clear > /etc/issue</userinput>.  This will insert the
relevant escape code into the start of the
<filename>/etc/issue</filename> file.  Note that if you do this, when
you edit the file, you should leave the ^[c character on the first line
alone.</para>

<para>The following escapes are recognised by agetty (the program which
usually parses <filename>/etc/issue</filename>).  This information is from
<userinput>man agetty</userinput> where you can find extra information
about the logon process.</para>

<para>The issue-file can contain certain escape codes to display various
information.  All escape codes consist of a backslash (\) immediately followed 
by one of the letters explained below (so \d in
<filename>/etc/issue</filename> would insert the current date).</para>

<para><screen>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 kernel, eg. 2.4.16.
t   Insert the current time.
u   Insert the number of current users logged in.
U   Insert the string "1 user" or "&lt;n&gt; users" where &lt;n&gt; is the
    number of current users logged in.
v   Insert the version of the OS, eg. the build-date etc.</screen></para>

</sect1>