MOTD maker
Most SSH servers issue a “message of the day” file when you log in to them, generally located at /etc/motd. This file can contain anything from news about the server to random ASCII art but sitting and typing in ANSI colour codes to emphasize text takes time.
This program was written to make it easy to generate MOTD files that contain bold and underline formatting along with the 8 colours you can use.
Currently the program allows you to output as raw ASCII (control characters saved as ASCII 027) or as the characters `027 (this is suitable for pasting into the editor joe, which I used before I discovered vim).
The “raw” output option is recommended, then copy the file straight over your existing /etc/motd using SCP or similar.
There is a subtle irony that it is a Windows program to create MOTD files for Unix servers however it was written when I was remotely administering Linux machines and had no access to them as a desktop development environment
Screenshots
Download
Download the full setup package – which includes all necessary dependencies











Cool tool! Thanks! Works for me on Windows 7 x64 RTM just fine.
Now all my home lab servers have sweet looking MOTDs!
Very nice dude :3 Thankees!
it is a cool program, but is very blank. You can’t make shapes, or put in logos, it doesn’t look like you can make it bigger, there are only 2 background colors, and is strictly text only. Next time you should add more features.
Danny, I’m super excited that you downloaded (for free) a program that I spend many hours on and found it useful! When you write a better version, please let me know so I can link it from here.
Why would you want to put shapes into a console window? Putting images into a ssh banner won’t work so of course it’s text only.
You can do some pretty awesome stuff with text
, so like david says i will look forward to your release.
Good work David, you think you could implement it to work with wine for linux machines, i mean it opens and genarates the text but when it writes to file/clipboard code get’s messed up.
Use this at work all the time – paired up with http://www.network-science.de/ascii/ this is a great little tool that has withstood the test of time rather nicely!
I love it !! thx