Provided by:
update-motd_1.11.1_all 
NAME
update-motd - Automatically update the message-of-the-day (MOTD)
SYNOPSIS
update-motd [--disable|--enable|--force]
[d|hourly|daily|weekly|monthly]
OPTIONS
--disable
Prevent update-motd from running. This is useful for temporarily
disabling automatic updates of /etc/motd by the
/etc/cron.d/update-motd cronjob. Note that this regenerates a
base MOTD without the update-motd additions, and then exits.
--enable
Allow update-motd to run. This is useful for enabling automatic
updates of /etc/motd through the /etc/cron.d/update-motd
cronjob. Note that this updates the MOTD immediately.
--force
Override a disabled update-motd for a single, immediate update
of /etc/motd.
d (Default)
Runs the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d
hourly Runs the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/hourly
daily Runs the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/daily
weekly Runs the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/weekly
monthly
Runs the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/monthly
DESCRIPTION
This script executes lists of scripts in lexical order, concatenating
and writing the output to /var/lib/motd, which is usually a symbolic
link to /etc/motd.
Users and/or packages should add symbolic links to /etc/update-motd.d/,
/etc/update-motd.d/hourly, /etc/update-motd.d/daily, /etc/update-
motd.d/weekly, /etc/update-motd.d/monthly, prepended with a two-digit
number to define the displayed order, as obeyed by run-parts(8).
Separate cron jobs will run update-motd every 10 minutes, hourly,
daily, weekly, and monthly. Each of execution of update-motd will run
the scripts in the corresponding /etc/update-motd.d/ directory. The
output of each script will be written and cached in /var/run/update-
motd/*, retaining the number and name of the script executed, to
preserve the ordering of the output in /etc/motd. After execution of
the current set of scripts, all files in /var/run/update-motd/ will be
concatenated with /etc/motd.tail and written to /etc/motd.
The update-motd script will not execute if the file /var/lib/update-
motd/disabled exists. One can override this using the --force option.
To permanently enable/disable update-motd, use:
$ sudo update-motd --enable
$ sudo update-motd --disable
If enabled, timestamp of the last update-motd run will be written to
/var/run/update-motd.lastrun.
FILES
/etc/cron.d/update-motd, /etc/update-motd.d/, /etc/update-
motd.d/hourly, /etc/update-motd.d/daily, /etc/update-motd.d/weekly,
/etc/update-motd.d/monthly, /etc/motd.tail, /var/run/motd,
/var/lib/update-motd/disabled, /var/run/update-motd, /var/run/update-
motd.lastrun
AUTHOR
Dustin Kirkland <kirkland@canonical.com>
LICENSE
This manpage and the update-motd utility was written by Dustin
Kirkland <kirkland@canonical.com> for Ubuntu systems (but may be used
by others). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify
this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
Version 3 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License
can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3.