I dunno if anyone else has run into this or not but recently I installed Slackware 9.1 on my box and wanted to put my own custom motd in there so that I would see it whenever I ssh'd into the box. Well everything was fine until I restarted.

Initially I created a text file and ftp'd it to the comp, then I ran a
file.txt > /etc/motd
to dump the output to the motd file (Its a lot of stuff).

I did this through ssh and every time I would exit and ssh back in, I would get the motd that I wanted. Great, good.

The question is, the moment I restart the computer, the motd file is wiped and is replaced with the default "Linux 2.4.22".

I thought ssh might be the problem so I directly edited the motd file through the terminal but I get the same results every time I restart. I had also thought that slack maybe just hadnt written the file to disk from its cache but I've let the computer sit there for 2 weeks+ and it still erases the motd every time I restart.

I checked the file permissions, nothing odd there,
-rw-r--r-- and even went so far as to chmod the file to 777 but still no positive results. It keeps on resetting itself.

Is there something maybe in the boot process that is clearing this file?

I'm a tad new to linux and even my profs at school dont know whats up with it. Any ideas? Thx in advance.

Don't know much about Slackware distrib. but it looks like you installed some kind of adminitration/configuration package that loads the initial settings when booting. You'll have use this configuration utility to change settings, or desactivate it and configure by hand...

"Is there something maybe in the boot process that is clearing this file?"

Suspecting the boot process then the next step is to go to /etc/rc.d and grep for motd:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/etc/rc.d$ grep motd *
rc.S:# Setup the /etc/motd to reflect the current kernel level:
rc.S:echo "`/bin/uname -sr`." > /etc/motd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bingo, it's in the file rc.S, just comment out (put a # at the start of the line) the offending line:

#echo "`/bin/uname -sr`." > /etc/motd

and your modif of motd should stick!

Alight! Found it in the rc.S file as SylvainP suggested and commented the line out. Everything is workin like a charm. Thanks a bunch pedro_nf and SylvainP!