03 Jul 2016

Information Shown After Logging Into Ubuntu

2 minutes | 219 words

Afer you log into an ubuntu instance you’ll usually see something like this:

Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-88-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

  System information as of Fri Jul  1 21:17:15 UTC 2016

  System load:  0.0               Processes:           100
  Usage of /:   20.1% of 7.74GB   Users logged in:     0
  Memory usage: 28%               IP address for eth0: 172.30.0.115
  Swap usage:   0%

  Graph this data and manage this system at:
    https://landscape.canonical.com/

  Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
    http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud

7 packages can be updated.
7 updates are security updates.


Last login: Fri Jul  1 21:17:15 2016 from 1.2.3.4

I have logged into many ubuntu servers in my time and today I finally looked up how the information that displays gets generated and displayed. I’ve used /etc/motd aka message of the day many times before but I noticed tha file doesn’t exist in a vanilla Ubuntu install. There are two main commands that are populating the information shown at login.

For system information:

landscape-sysinfo

example output:

->$ landscape-sysinfo
  System load:  0.0               Processes:           99
  Usage of /:   20.1% of 7.74GB   Users logged in:     1
  Memory usage: 28%               IP address for eth0: 10.10.10.10
  Swap usage:   0%

  Graph this data and manage this system at:
    https://landscape.canonical.com/

For packages status:

/usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available

example output:

->$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available

7 packages can be updated.
7 updates are security updates.