A.P. Lawrence

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open Desktop or Openserver.

There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

TCP/IP and NFS FAQ

How do I get /etc/issue to print for telnet sessions?

Modern releases use /etc/issue for telnet sessions

See TA 640279. Basically, you will need to create a file (we'll call it /etc/telbanner), owned by bin/bin and readable by everyone, with the message to be printed. Next, create the following shell script and call it /etc/telbannerd:

#!/bin/sh
# name of file with banner
BANNER_FILE=/etc/telbanner
# name of telnet daemon
TELNETD=/etc/telnetd
# print banner if it exists and is readable
[ -r ${BANNER_FILE} ] && cat ${BANNER_FILE}
# now pass control to telnetd
exec ${TELNETD} $*

This script should be owned by bin/bin and world-executable and world- readable. Now edit the telnet line in /etc/inetd.conf and change the /etc/telnetd to /etc/telbannerd. Leave everything else exactly as it is. Finally, you'll need to send a SIGHUP to inetd to force it to re-read /etc/inetd.conf.

One other note - in order for the above to work, you need the kernel support for #! turned on; see the entry on hashplingenable in section 3 of this FAQ.