NAME¶
xmotd - message-of-the-day browser for X (and dumb terminals, VT100, etc.)
SYNOPSIS¶
xmotd [
X-toolkit options] [
xmotd-options]
file [
file2 ... ]
xmotd [
X-toolkit options] [
xmotd-options]
directory
or (in text-mode)
xmotd [
-stampfile stamp-file] [
-wakeup
sleep-period]
file [
file2 ...]
DESCRIPTION¶
xmotd is a utility program (for X11 and dumb terminals) that can be
executed during the login process to display pertinent messages (i.e. the
message of the day) or to periodically check, while the user is logged in,
whether one or more message files have been modified and display them if they
have. Under X11, it displays a customizable bitmap in the top-left corner. It
provides for up to 3 lines of title-text (the length of the text depends on
the size of the font chosen). It has a
"Dismiss" button below
the bitmap and a read-only text-widget that displays the message (or messages)
of the day. The date of the message (and optionally, the filename) is
displayed just above the text.
xmotd can be configured to run in various modes: to always pop-up after
login or to pop-up only when the motd changes; to pop-down automatically
(without user-intervention) after a specified delay; to run in the background
and periodically check if the motd has changed and display it. By default,
xmotd displays a message only if the file(s) was updated since the last
time the user read it.
If
xmotd has to display more than one file, the user is obliged to press
the
"Next Message" button to view subsequent messages; the
text of the button changes to
"Dismiss" when the last message
is displayed.
xmotd defaults to text-only mode (output to
stdout when it cannot
connect to an X display. This mode is useful for running
xmotd from
user's
~/.login file in cases where they can also login via dialup.
This version of
xmotd cannot display messages marked-up with HTML and xpm
colour pixmap logos, because the code that provided that functionality does
not comply with Debian Free Software Guidelines.
OPERATION¶
xmotd is usually run from the system
Xsession file via
xdm(1), CDE
login and/or from the user's
~/.login file. At sites where xdm is not
used,
xmotd may be run from the user's
~/.xinitrc where a
(possibly) malicious user may intentionally or accidently remove the
xmotd invocation from the file.
When
xmotd first runs, it creates a timestamp file (by default called
.xmotd ) in the user's home-directory. On subsequent invocations,
xmotd uses the date of this file to decide whether or not the
message-of-the-day (motd) files have been updated. If the date of the motd
file is later than the date on the
~/.xmotd file, then
xmotd
will display the motd file; otherwise it will silently exit (if there are no
more files to be displayed and if
-wakeup was not used). When invoked
with
-wakeup, xmotd daemonizes itself and goes to sleep for the
specified sleep-period, periodically waking-up to see if the motds have
changed and then displaying them.
By default,
xmotd pops-down only when the
"Dismiss"
button is clicked; the rest of the login-procedure then continues. This
interactive behaviour can be overridden so
xmotd will pop-down without
user intervention, after a specified timeout period.
OPTIONS¶
All the standard
X options are valid. In addition, the following options,
which may also be set as resources in the app-defaults file (See RESOURCES),
are available:
- -always
-
overrides xmotd default behavior; the ~/.xmotd time-stamp is
ignored and the message (or messages) is always displayed. Zero-length
(empty) files are displayed when this option is specified.
- -atom atom-name
-
register xmotd with name atom-name. By default, only one
xmotd is allowed to run (per user). You can permit multiple
instances of xmotd to run by giving each instance an unique name.
xmotd will intern an atom with the X server, that combines the
atom-name and the user's login-id (e.g. "xmotd.elf" ; the
default atom name is "xmotd"); subsequent invocations of
xmotd will check if this atom exists and exit if it does.
- -bitmaplogo bitmap-filename
-
specifies that the bitmap bitmap-filename is to be displayed in place
of the default bitmap, the "X" logo. Ideally, the specified
bitmap should have a width and height of 100 pixels. If xpm support is
compiled-in, xpm colour pixmaps may be substituted instead. See NOTES for
additional details.
- -help
-
displays command-line options usage.
- -paranoid
-
(used with -warnfile) displays the warning message unconditionally at
every login (even when there are no messages to be displayed).
- -popdown timeout
-
exit or pop-down without user intervention, timeout seconds after
being invoked. The user can dismiss xmotd at any time before the
timeout, by clicking on the "Dismiss" button. This option
is only valid at the initial login; it is ignored on subsequent pop-ups
when xmotd is invoked with -wakeup.
- -showfilename
-
displays the filename of the file currently being viewed (as it appears on
the command-line), alongside the date.
- -stampfile stamp-filename
-
overrides the default timestamp filename, ~/.xmotd, and uses
stamp-filename instead.
- -tail
-
display the end of a file; the text is automatically scrolled so the end of
the file is visible.
- -usedomains
-
uses local domain-name based time-stamping in cases where user's
home-directories are shared (NFS mounted) across various domains.
Time-stamps are created (and checked) with appropriate domain-names
appended.
- -warnfile warning-filename
-
specifies a file containing a standard message used to warn users of the
consequences of deviance and sundry unlawful things they should not even
think of doing on your network; your network's rules of use,
information about disk quotas, modem charges and printer accounting fees
(used with -paranoid).
- -wakeup sleep-period
-
causes xmotd to run in the background and wakeup periodically every
sleep-period hours to check whether the files have been modified
and therefore need to be (re-)displayed. The sleep period is specified as
a floating point number where the fractional portion indicates the number
of minutes. For example, a sleep-period of 0.25 indicates 15 minutes (one
quarter of an hour) and a sleep-period of 1.5 indicates one and one-half
hours; the minimum (enforced) sleep-period is 1 minute. The -wakeup
option is useful at sites where users with personal workstations never
log-out. See NOTES for additional details.
- file [file2 ... ]
-
one or more files to be displayed may be specified. The file(s) contain the
text of the message(s) of the day. If HTML support is compiled-in the motd
files should be marked-up with HTML.
- directory
-
Instead of supplying one or more files on the command-line, xmotd may
be supplied a directory containing file(s) to be displayed.
xmotd will scan the directory and display all the files contained
therein, that need to be displayed. This feature is useful when used with
the -wakeup option; upon waking-up, xmotd will re-scan the
directory for any files (including new files that have been subsequently
added) that need to be displayed.
EXAMPLES¶
Give
xmotd a geometry option to tell it to pop-up at a location other
than 0,0 and read-in the message-of-the-day from the file
/usr/local/motd:
xmotd -geometry +20+20 /usr/local/motd
Use a bigger window (900x600) and automatically position it (at top-left corner
at 20,20), always pop-up
xmotd displaying the contents of
/usr/local/motd, ignoring the user's
~/.xmotd timestamp-file and
pop-down after 20 seconds:
xmotd -geom 900x600+20+20 -always -popdown 20 /usr/local/motd
Use a custom bitmap in the file
/usr/local/xmotd.bm:
xmotd -geom +5+5 -bitmaplogo /usr/local/xmotd.bm /usr/local/motd
In the following example, all the files in
/usr/local/messages/ will be
checked for modification times greater than the time-stamp and only those
files will be displayed and every eight and a half hours,
xmotd will
check if any files have changed (or new ones added) and display them if
necessary:
xmotd -geom +5+5 -wakeup 8.5 /usr/local/messages/
To display a warning-message every time the user logs-in (even when no messages
need to be displayed), and to display the filenames of the files being viewed,
use:
xmotd -geom +5+5 -warnfile /usr/local/WARNING -paranoid \
-showfilename /usr/local/motds/
X resources may be changed from the command-line using the
-xrm option.
This example (typed as a single line) illustrates how
xmotd can be
customized exclusively from the command-line:
xmotd -always \
-xrm "*title.label: Top 10 Disk Hogs\n As of midnight\n " \
-xrm "*title.foreground: yellow" \
-xrm "*form.background: red" \
-xrm "*title.background: red" \
-xrm "*logo.background: pink" \
-xrm "*text*font: -adobe-times-bold-*-normal-*-*-180-*" \
-geometry 500x650-1-1 \
-bitmaplogo /usr/common/choke.xbm
-popdown 10 \
/usr/common/accounting/top &
RESOURCES¶
editres(1) may be used to edit resources. The application class-name is
XMotd.
The resource:
XMotd*Always (set to either
True or
False) is
equivalent to the
-always command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Atom (set to the name of the atom
xmotd is
registered with) is equivalent to the
-atom command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*BitmapLogo (set to the path and filename of the
bitmap/pixmap-file) is equivalent to the
-bitmaplogo command-line
option.
The resource:
XMotd*Browser (set to the path and filename of the browser
to be used when users click on an URL (HTML version only)) is equivalent to
the
-browser command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Paranoid (set to
True/False) is equivalent to
the
-paranoid command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Popdown (set to the number of seconds) is equivalent
to the
-popdown command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*UseDomains (set to
True/False) is equivalent
to the
-usedomains command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*ShowFilename (set to
True/False) is equivalent
to the
-showfilename command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Warnfile (set to the path and filename of the
warning-file) is equivalent to the
-warnfile command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Tail (set to
True/False) is equivalent to the
-tail command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*Wakeup (set to an floating-point number representing
hours) is equivalent to the
-wakeup command-line option.
The resource:
XMotd*title.label (set to a possibly multi-line string) may
be used to customize the title.
By default, the title is the single line:
"Message Of The
Day\n\n\n" (the 2-character sequence,
"\n",
indicates a carriage-return).
For example, if you want a 2 line title that reads:
This is the
Message of the Day
the resource can be specified as:
*title.label: \ This is the\nMessage of the Day\n\n
Note that the first backslash quotes the leading spaces that indent the words,
"This is the".
The widget hierarchy is as follows (Class-name & object-name):
XMotd xmotd
Form form
Label logo
Label title
Label hline
Label info
Command quit
Text text OR Html text
FILES¶
$ProjectRoot/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession
(where
$ProjectRoot is
/usr/X11R6 or, perhaps
/usr/X11).
For systems running CDE put a script that invokes
xmotd in
/etc/dt/config/Xsession.d/
$HOME/.xmotd (default timestamp filename)
$HOME/.login
SEE ALSO¶
X(1), xdm(1), editres(1), login(1), xv(l),
gimp(l), xpaint(l), cat(1), less(l)
NOTES¶
The
-always option is considered fascist; it is provided merely for
completeness and for testing purposes.
If xpm support is compiled-in,
xmotd -help will print the words
"bitmap/pixmap" for the
-bitmaplogo description
instead of just
"bitmap".
Under dumb-terminal mode, all command-line options are ignored with the
exception of
-stampfile and
-wakeup; the
-always option
is equivalent to cat'ing the motd from the
~/.login file; and
-popdown is not really relevant. Both
-warnfile and
-paranoid may be simulated with appropriate
cat(1) and
more(1)
commands.
xmotd processes invoked with
-wakeup will continue sleeping,
"S" in the
ps(1) status field, after the user has logged-out until
the sleep timeout expires. Only when
xmotd wakes-up, will it detect
that the user has logged-out and exit.
xmotd's logout-detection routine
relies on the
xdm(1) support scripts
GiveConsole (which chown's
/dev/console to the user) and
TakeConsole (which chown's
/dev/console back to root) setting the correct permissions and
ownership on
/dev/console. When
xmotd wakes-up, it attempts to
open(2) /dev/console for reading; if this open fails, it is an
indication that the user has logged out because
TakeConsole has changed
ownership of the console.
BUGS¶
There are no provisions for displaying embedded images in the HTML version of
xmotd (until a stable XmHTML widget is available, or perhaps when
xmotd is ported to the GTK).
At least one other.
QUOTES¶
...and our lives are forever changed
we will never be the same
the more you change the less you feel
-- Tonight, tonight,
"Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness"
Billy Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins
Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
(All things change, and we change with them).
--Matthias Borbonius:
Deliciae Poetarum Germanorum, i. 685
To everything there is a season,
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
AUTHORS¶
Luis Fernandes <elf@ee.ryerson.ca> is the primary author and maintainer.
Richard Deal <rdeal@atl.lmco.com> contributed the directory-scanning code.
Stuart A. Harvey <sharvey@primenet.com> contributed the URL support code
for the HTML version.
David M. Ronis <ronis@onsager.chem.mcgill.ca> contributed code to support
xpm logos.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright 1993 (as xbanner, no public release)
Copyright 1994-97, 1999, 2001, 2003 Luis A. Fernandes
Permission to use, copy, hack, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that
the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.
This application is presented as is without any implied or written warranty.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass
Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
The HTML widget Copyright 1993, Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
See the file libhtmlw/HTML.c for the complete text of the NCSA copyright.
NOTE: THE HTML WIDGET IS NOT DISTRIBUTED IN THE "LITE" VERSION OF THE
xmotd DISTRIBUTION, WHICH IS THEREFORE FULLY COMPLIANT WITH THE GPL.