XMOTD(8) X11 Release 6.3 XMOTD(8)
Sep 12 1997
NAME
xmotd - message-of-the-day browser for X (and dumb terminals, VT100,
etc.)
SYNOPSIS
xmotd [X-toolkit options] [-always] [-bitmaplogo bitmap-filename] [-
browser web-browser] [-help] [-stampfile stamp-filename] [-
showfilename] [-usedomains] [-wakeup sleep-period] [-warnfile warning-
filename [-paranoid]] [-popdown timeout] motd-filename [motd-filename2
... ]
or
xmotd xmotd-options motd-directoryname
or (in text-mode)
xmotd [-stampfile stamp-filename] [-wakeup sleep-period] motd-filename
[motd-filename2 ...]
DESCRIPTION
xmotd is a message-of-the-day browser for X11 and dumb terminals.
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 required 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.
xmotd can display messages marked-up with HTML and xpm colour pixmap
logos. Support for these must be configured at compile-time.
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OPERATION
xmotd is usually run from the system Xsession file via xdm(1) 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.
In cases where user's home-directories are shared (NFS mounted) across
various (unique) domains, xmotd supports domain-name based time-
stamping by creating timestamps with the appropriate domain-names
appended and checks the dates of these timestamps with the date of the
message-of-the-day file(s).
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 overriden 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's "smart" 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.
-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.
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-browser web-browser
specifies the path and filename of a browser to be used when
an URL is clicked (HTML version only). The default is
"/usr/local/bin/netscape". See NOTES for additional details.
-help prints detailed command-line usage.
-paranoid
(used with -warnfile) displays the warning message
unconditionally at every login (even when there are no
messages to be displayed).
-popdown timeout
indicates that xmotd should exit/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 (as it appears on the command-line), of
the file currently being viewed, alongside the date.
-stampfile stamp-filename
overrides the default timestamp filename, ~/.xmotd and uses
stamp-filename instead.
-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
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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
option).
-wakeup sleep-period
causes xmotd to run in the background and wakeup periodically
every sleep-period hours to check whether the message(s) on
the command-line 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 have their own workstations never log-out.
See NOTES for additional details.
motd-filename [motd-filename2 ... ]
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.
motd-directoryname
Instead of supplying one or more files on the command-line,
xmotd may be supplied a directory-name 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-
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down after 20 seconds:
xmotd -geom 900x600+20+20 -always -popdown 20 /usr/local/motd
Use a custom bitmap as the logo (the bitmap is 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:
/usr/X11/bin/xmotd -always \
-xrm "*title.label: Top 10 Disk Hogs As of midnight " \
-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
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*Popdown (set to the number of seconds) is
equivalent to the -popdown command-line option.
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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*BitmapLogo (set to the path and filename of the
bitmap/pixmap-file) is equivalent to the -bitmaplogo 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*Paranoid ((set to True/False) is equivalent to the
-paranoid 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*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".
WIDGET HIERARCHY
The widget hierarchy is as follows (Class-name & object-name):
XMotd xmotd
Form form
Label logo
Label title
Label hline
Label info
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Command quit
Text text OR Html text
FILES
$ProjectRoot/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession
(where $ProjectRoot is /usr/X11R6 or, perhaps /usr/X11).
$HOME/.xmotd (default stamp-file)
$HOME/.login
SEE ALSO
X(1), xdm(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 will detect that
the user has logged-out and exit. xmotd's logout-detection routine
relies on the xdm(1) support scripts GiveConsole and TakeConsole
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 indicates that the user has logged out because
TakeConsole has changed ownership of the console.
The -browser option was originally called -netscape; it was renamed to
be more generic. When initially run, the browser is invoked as:
"/usr/local/bin/netscape %s"
where %s is replaced by the selected URL. Subsequent URLs will be
displayed in the already running browser using the syntax:
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"/usr/local/bin/netscape -remote openURL(%s)"
You may substitute a browser of your choice for netscape, if it
supports this syntax.
BUGS
At least one.
Also, there are no provisions for displaying embedded images in the
HTML version of xmotd.
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.
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COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1993 (as xbanner, no public release) 1994-97, 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.
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