Custom welcome message on your Raspberry Pi

Setting up a custom SSH welcome message on your Raspberry Pi can be a fun way to add a personal touch to your device. In this tutorial, we will use two command-line utilities, figlet and lolcat, to create an attractive and informative message that will be displayed when you log in to your Raspberry Pi via SSH.

Are you tired of the boring, default message that appears when you log into your Raspberry Pi via SSH? Want to add some personality to your device? In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use two command-line utilities, figlet and lolcat, to create an eye-catching and informative message that will be displayed each time you log into your Raspberry Pi.

Step 1: Installation

Before we begin, we need to install figlet and lolcat on our Raspberry Pi. Both of these utilities can be installed by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install figlet lolcat

Step 2: Download Figlet Fonts

Figlet comes with a few built-in fonts, but if you want to add some variety to your message, you'll want to download some additional fonts. You can find a wide variety of figlet fonts on Github, and I've made a repo full of fonts that will work with this tutorial. You can find it here. Once you've cloned the repository, place the fonts inside the /usr/share/figlet directory.

Step 3: Removing the Default MOTD

The default message that appears when you log into your Raspberry Pi via SSH is known as the Message of the Day (MOTD). To remove it and make way for our custom message, we need to delete two files: /etc/update-motd.d/10-uname and /etc/motd. You can do this by running the following commands in the terminal:

sudo rm /etc/update-motd.d/10-uname
sudo rm /etc/motd

Step 4: Configuring SSH

Now that we've removed the default MOTD, we need to configure SSH to display our custom message. To do this, we need to open the SSH configuration file, /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and make a few changes.

PrintMotd no
Banner none
UsePAM yes
PrintLastLog no

This will stop the default MOTD from being printed and tell the pi to use PAM instead. PrintLastLog controls the bit that tells you the last time you logged in - I don't care for this as my pi doesn't host anything important and isn't exposed to the internet, but if those are not true for you, keeping this set to "yes" may be in your best interest.

Step 5: Configure PAM

To enable the PAM motd to print upon successful login, make the following changes to /etc/pam.d/login

# Prints the message of the day upon succesful login.
# (Replaces the `MOTD_FILE' option in login.defs)
session    optional   pam_motd.so  motd=/run/motd
# session    optional   pam_motd.so  noupdate

Step 6: Restarting SSH

To make our changes take effect, we need to restart the SSH service. You can do this by running the following command in the terminal: sudo systemctl restart sshd

Step 7: Create the Custom MOTD Script

Finally, it's time to create our custom MOTD script. We'll be creating a new script 00-header in the /etc/update-motd.d directory. This script will contain the message that we want to display when we log into our Raspberry Pi.

#!/bin/sh

# redirect errors to stdout... you never know
exec 2>&1

[ -r /etc/lsb-release ] && . /etc/lsb-release

if [ -z "$DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION" ] && [ -x /usr/bin/lsb_release ]; then
   # Fall back to using the very slow lsb_release utility
   DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=$(lsb_release -s -d)
fi

# just in case lolcat isn't in the path
LOLCAT=/usr/games/lolcat

# welcome text
WELCOME_TO=$(echo 'WELCOME TO YOUR' | figlet -tc -f term)

# randomize the figlet font
FIGLETFONT=$(ls /usr/share/figlet/*.flf | shuf -n1 )

# apply figlet font and center to chosen text
INFO_HOST=$(echo 'RASPBERRY PI' | figlet -tc -f $FIGLETFONT)

# optional third line under figlet font
#HOME_SERVER=$(echo 'HOME SERVER' | figlet -tc -f term)

# get os/arch/date
INFO_OS=$(printf "%s (%s)\n%s" "$DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION" "$(uname -r)" "$(date)" | figlet -tc -f term)

# print each variable and color with lolcat
# NOTE: needs -f to force color output since intermediate file is not a TTY
printf "\n\n\n%s\n\n%s\n\n%s\n%s\n\n\n" "$WELCOME_TO" "$INFO_HOST" "$HOME_SERVER" "$INFO_OS" | $LOLCAT -f

run the command sudo chmod +x /etc/update-motd.d/00-header to make the file executable, and you're good to go!

Conclusion

As you can see, this is a quick and easy project that not only adds some personality to your Raspberry Pi, but also teaches you about some useful command-line utilities. By using figlet and lolcat, you can create an eye-catching and informative custom SSH welcome message that will be displayed every time you log into your device. I hope that you not only enjoyed this tutorial, but that you also learned a thing or two at the same time!