Whenever you first log in via SSH to your Raspberry Pi, you are greeted by the “motd” (message of the day). This message includes a bit of text and system information, along with the line Raspberry Pi Debian GNU/Linux comes with absolutely no warranty. If you are getting sick of reading this repetitive information whenever you log in to your Raspberry Pi, then we have good news for you: it is relatively simple to change this message or to disable it completely. In this tutorial, you will see how to change or disable the message of the day (motd) for the Raspberry Pi.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to change the message of the day on Raspberry Pi
- How to completely disable the message of the day for Raspberry Pi
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Raspberry Pi |
| Software | N/A |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Edit or Disable the MOTD on Raspberry Pi
If you log into your Raspberry Pi via SSH every once in a while, then surely you have encountered this annoying message many times by now:
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
This text comes from the /etc/motd file. It can be edited by opening the file with root permissions and a text editor like nano:
$ sudo nano /etc/motd
But, this method is only good if you want to change the message of the day.
If you want to completely disable the message of the day, then the easier and more reliable method is to simply create a ~/.hushlogin file, with a simple touch command:
$ touch ~/.hushlogin
Executing the command above will disable the message of the day for the user whose home directory contains the file. If you want to disable the message of the day for multiple users, then their home directories must also contain a
.hushlogin file.
Let’s try another SSH login after having created the file:
As you can see, we no longer get the persistent message about a warranty and other terms of use.
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to edit and disable the message of the day on a Raspberry Pi system. This is a repetitive and annoying message that warns us of the warranty and terms on our own system, and takes up quite a few lines in the terminal. Once you have seen the warning once, it will be safe to say that you never want to see it again. Fortunately, it only takes the execution of one simple command to get rid of the message for good.
