Fancy welcome screen in login shell for Debian

Since we are going to edit a system-wide file and a typo might mess everything, it is a good practice to make a backup of the file.

However, in case you forgot to do so, there is a copy of the system default profile in /usr/share/base-files directory.
* For user specific and not system-wide, edit file /[user]/.profile instead. *

Root access to the system and a text editor such as vi/vim, nano etc.

Figlet and fortune (see below).

Upon login is always nice to have a quick and well formatted overview of what's going on.
We will include information such as: last login, resources usage, uptime.
Also since in my system I have some services set up using systemctl that should be up and running 24/7, I included a status info for each of them.
Finally, a quote for inspiration or just a joke (oftentimes a bad one) is always a good way to start messing with linux systems. 😁

Since we need to query a lot of information, we will start by executing the necessary commands and hold them on variables. Finally we will format print everything with a big echo.

1. Store your last login info

   LAST_LOGIN=$(last | grep `whoami` | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $3" / "$4" "$5" "$6" "$7" " $8" " $9" " $10}')

2. Query online users

   ONLINE_USERS=$(users | wc -w)

3. System uptime info

   upSecs=$(cat /proc/uptime | cut -f1 -d.)
   upDays=$((upSecs/60/60/24))
   upHours=$((upSecs/60/60%24))
   upMins=$((upSecs/60%60))

4. System & Memory info

   SYS_LOADS=`cat /proc/loadavg | awk '{print $1}'`
   SWAP_USED=`free -m | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
   NUM_PROCS=`ps aux | wc -l`
   MEMORY1=`free -t -m | sed -n 2p | awk '{ print $3" MB"; }'`
   MEMORY2=`free -t -m | grep "Mem" | awk '{print $2" MB";}'`

5. IP Address of host

   IPADDRESS=`/sbin/ifconfig | grep -A 1 'eno1' | tail -1 | awk '{print $2}'`
   # Replace eno1 with your network interface

6. Finally, in order to retrieve the status of services we need to query systemctl

   OPENVPN_STATUS=$(systemctl check openvpn@server)
   # Edit accordingly

7. Include a greeting based on time of day

   HOUR=$(date +"%H")
   if [ $HOUR -lt 12  -a $HOUR -ge 0 ]; then
       TIME="morning"
   elif [ $HOUR -lt 17 -a $HOUR -ge 12 ]; then
       TIME="afternoon"
   else
       TIME="evening"
   fi

We now have everything to start wrapping up our output.

echo "
===================================================================
- Good $TIME `whoami`. Welcome !!!
- Last login..........: $LAST_LOGIN
===================================================================
- IP Address..........: $IPADDRESS
- Users...............: Currently $ONLINE_USERS user(s) logged on
- Server Time.........: `date`
===================================================================
- System load.........: $SYS_LOADS / $NUM_PROCS processes running
- Memory used.........: $MEMORY1 / $MEMORY2
- Swap in use.........: $SWAP_USED MB
- System uptime.......: $upDays days $upHours hours $upMins minutes
===================================================================
- OpenVPN (Server) ...: $OPENVPN_STATUS
==================================================================="

Append all above snippets right after export $PATH command inside /etc/profile.

It is advised to test individual commands in a shell before actually merging in /etc/profile.

Logout -> login and voila!

If you want the complete output of included figure you must install figlet and fortune.

$ sudo apt-get install fortune figlet

Append

figlet $hostname

right before your big echo. Maybe add a linebreak as well.

Finally, after your big echo add one or two linebreaks and

fortune