How do I bring back the initial 'stats page' (message of the day) after an upgrade to 14.04 server?

Question

I've been using Ubuntu Server for quite a while, and I like seeing this when I log on over SSH:

Welcome to Ubuntu 13.04 (GNU/Linux 3.8.0-35-generic x86_64)

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

  System information as of Mon Apr 21 02:06:46 UTC 2014

  System load:  0.0               Processes:           88
  Usage of /:   64.8% of 7.75GB   Users logged in:     0
  Memory usage: 64%               IP address for eth0: xx.xx.xxx.xxx
  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

  Use Juju to deploy your cloud instances and workloads:
    https://juju.ubuntu.com/#cloud-raring

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

*** /dev/xvda1 will be checked for errors at next reboot ***

Last login: Fri Apr 18 21:29:50 2014 from bla-bla-bla.foo.bar.net
ubuntu@ip-xx-yy-zzz-aaa:~$

After upgrading one of my servers to 14.04, though, I only see this:

$ ssh closet
Last login: Sun Apr 20 19:42:57 2014 from 192.168.0.7
me@server1:~$

I don't like this as much. How can I bring back the old welcome screen?

How did you upgrade? I've upgraded my personal dedicated server from 13.04 to 13.10 (note, as typed, you missed a release) and then 14.04 via the do-release-upgrade system. My system currently runs Trusty, and still displays the "summary" output. It's possible that a package migration changed this behavior, and knowing the interim packages might help diagnose the issue. — K. Darien Freeheart, Apr 21 '14 at 02:16
Did you use apt-get dist-upgrade, or the do-release-upgrade tool? — K. Darien Freeheart, Apr 21 '14 at 02:19
@K.DarienFreeheart dist-upgrade doesn't upgrade distributions. — Seth, Apr 21 '14 at 03:56
@Undo There should also be a plaintext file called motd. Not there? — Seth, Apr 21 '14 at 16:17
@Seth I don't see it - it's that single line, with motd colored in red. — , Apr 21 '14 at 16:18
Yes I do, @Seth. It looks like it contains what I want when logging in. — , Apr 21 '14 at 16:27

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 12 '16 at 16:21

8

The stats you see are provided by a script that uses the output of landscape-sysinfo in the update-motd building process. It appears to not be installed by default in 14.04 anymore.

Install landscape-common to have the stats re-inserted into the motd. (It might take 10 minutes for the cronjob to update the motd after installation).

edited Jul 12 '16 at 16:21

amc

7,142

answered Dec 22 '14 at 08:27

Jess

181

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

From the information gathered in the comments, you don't have the /etc/motd file. Since this is just a symlink to /var/run/motd and you confirmed that you have that file just recreate the link with:

sudo ln -s /var/run/motd /etc/motd

Reboot the server.

Trivia:

motd stands for "Message of the day". It contains the information you see when you boot the server.
The scripts in the /etc/update-motd.d folder update the motd on boot.

How do I bring back the initial 'stats page' (message of the day) after an upgrade to 14.04 server?

2 Answers2