Ansible-MessageOfTheDay

Ansible-MessageOfTheDay is an Ansible role for configuring Ubuntu-like Message Of The Day (MOTD) on Debian systems.

Requirements

At the moment this role is being written for Debian (Jessie and Stretch). It may evolve to include other major distributions (except Ubuntu).

Role Variables

There are 8 role variables:

runtime
mount_points
mount_info
network_info
figlet_hostname
display_header
memory_info
pkg_info

• runtime variable stores the date format. Default date format is +%A %d %B, %Y @ %k:%M:%S %Z which is passed to the date command every time a user logs in.
• mount_points variable will have mount poins whose storage consumption you wish to display. By default its set to /. You can add any other mount points you wish display on MOTD.
• mount_info variable is set to True by default. When set to False, it will not display information of mounted partitions and their storage consumption.
• network_info variable gets IP addresses on all interfaces of the system. By default its set to False. You canset this to True if you wish to see network information on MOTD. If set to True this will also install moreutils package which helps in acquiring IP addresses of all interfaces of the system.
• figlet_hostname is set to True by default. It will install figlet package and use it to display hostanme in MOTD.
• display_header shows distribution information after displaying figlet hostname. By default its set to True. You can set it to False if you do not wihs to see dsirtibution information.
• memory_info shows RAM and swap information. By default its set to True. You can set it to False if you do not want to see it on MOTD.
• pkg_info is set to True by default and shows package updates.

Dependencies

This role doesn't depends on any other role for execution.

Example Playbook

An example of running the role is as follows:

- hosts: servers
  gather_facts: True
  roles:
     - Ansible-MessageOfTheDay

By default if will give you an output as follows:

 __  __            _       ____  ____         ___  _ 
|  \/  | __ _ _ __(_) __ _|  _ \| __ )       / _ \/ |
| |\/| |/ _` | '__| |/ _` | | | |  _ \ _____| | | | |
| |  | | (_| | |  | | (_| | |_| | |_) |_____| |_| | |
|_|  |_|\__,_|_|  |_|\__,_|____/|____/       \___/|_|
                                                     

Welcome to Debian GNU/Linux 8.10 (jessie) (3.16.0-5-amd64).

System Information as of Monday 29 January, 2018 @ 12:43:35 PKT

Average System Load: 0.38 0.16 0.06

Total RAM: 1503 MiB     RAM Used: 31.00%
RAM Cached: .66%        RAM Free: 68.99%
RAM Available: 11.70%   Total SWAP: 1699 MiB
SWAP Used: 0%           SWAP Free: 100.00%

Total Storage Used on /: 10%

A total of 17 are pending.
17 are security updates.

If, for example, you want to disaply network information and modify date format:

- hosts: servers
  gather_facts: True
  roles:
     - { role: Ansible-MessageOfTheDay, runtime: "%k:%M:%S %Z", network_info: True }

Similarly, you may use other variables.

License

This playbook is licensed under GPL License, version 2 (See the LICENSE file).

Author

• Thanks to @nickcharlton for writing this post.
• Saad Ali