How to jazz up your remote login terminal with fortune

[crazybill]

Getting bored with the same dull login terminal when you do remote administration to your Hoary Ubuntu Linux computer? I figured out how to jazz it up some.

First, you should find an interesting random-quote/fortune/joke program at
/usr/games/fortune

Fortune is a neat program that yields adages, fortunes, quotes, humor, etc in a "random" fashion.

First you want to make sure that the binary command fortune is in a path defined by the bash shell's envionmental variable, $PATH

The easiest way to do that is

# cp /usr/games/fortune /usr/bin/fortune

Now, the fortune command should run from any directory with simply typing fortune
Here is an example run:


teacher@ubuntu4:~ $ fortune
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain

Now we are set to run fortune at setup. The key is to modify the file, /etc/bash.bashrc

You will edit /etc/bash.bashrc by adding "fortune" to the bottom of the bash configuration file and save it, such as you see I did here:


teacher@ubuntu4:~ $ tail /etc/bash.bashrc

export JAVA_HOME
PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export PATH
fortune

Now everytime you log into your server in the bash shell, you will get fortune greeting you with humor, wisdom, and wit.

[crazybill]

By the way if you want to jazz up your login screen even more, add cowsay before fortune.

# apt-get install cowsay

Then edit /etc/bash.bashrc again by adding
cowsay 'howdy'
on the line above fortune, as I have done here::


teacher@ubuntu4:~ $ tail /etc/bash.bashrc

PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export PATH
cowsay 'howdy'
fortune

Noter that what is typed inbetween the single quotes following cowsay will be what the cow exclaims. Here is an example screen:


_______
< howdy >
-------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.

Have fun!

[JonahRowley]

Great tip, only a few issues.

First, ~/.bashrc or /etc/bash.bashrc should not produce output when running in non-interactive mode. This will break things like scp, and it's not something that's easy to diagnose. It's OK to add it to the end of /etc/bash.bashrc because of the [ -z "$PS1" ] && return line, but if you add this to ~/.bashrc, beware! Add it within the if [ "$PS1" ]; then conditional.


First you want to make sure that the binary command fortune is in a path defined by the bash shell's envionmental variable, $PATH

The easiest way to do that is

# cp /usr/games/fortune /usr/bin/fortune


By default, /usr/games is already in your path. If it's not, copying it to /usr/bin is not the best idea, if fortune is updated in the future (for some reason), /usr/bin/fortune will still be the old code. Use ln -s /usr/games/fortune /usr/bin/fortune instead, or call it with its complete path, add /usr/games/fortune to your bashrc instead of just fortune.

[Gandalf]

beautifull tip, Thx

[fng]

how could you remove the following text at login?


The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

[Estevon]

The text you are talking about is in /etc/motd

Just open the file and delete the text.

[kvidell]

_______
< howdy >
-------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.

Have fun!
Or better yet:
fortune | cowsay -n
;)

44/kvidell: fortune | cowsay -n
__________________________________________________ ______________________
/ Q: What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean? \
| A: It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the |
| Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take |
\ the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews. /
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||


And don't forget you can do cowsay -f for other cow files!

52/kvidell: ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows
apt.cow bud-frogs.cow cower.cow dragon-and-cow.cow elephant-in-snake.cow ghostbusters.cow kiss.cow kosh.cow mech-and-cow.cow moofasa.cow ren.cow skeleton.cow stegosaurus.cow surgery.cow turkey.cow udder.cow www.cow
beavis.zen.cow bunny.cow daemon.cow dragon.cow eyes.cow head-in.cow kitty.cow luke-koala.cow meow.cow moose.cow satanic.cow small.cow stimpy.cow telebears.cow turtle.cow vader.cow
bong.cow cheese.cow default.cow elephant.cow flaming-sheep.cow hellokitty.cow koala.cow mech-and-cow milk.cow mutilated.cow sheep.cow sodomized.cow supermilker.cow three-eyes.cow tux.cow vader-koala.cow
53/kvidell: fortune | cowsay -n -f cheese.cow
__________________________________________
< You are capable of planning your future. >
------------------------------------------
\
\
_____ _________
/ \_/ |
| ||
| ||
| ###\ /### | |
| 0 \/ 0 | |
/| | |
/ | < |\ \
| /| | | |
| | \_______/ | | |
| | | / /
/|| /|||
----------------|
| | | |
*** ***
/___\ /___\

- Kev

[RastaMahata]

I love this! This goes to the index right away :D

PD: It's a good thing to note the fortunes-xx packages, containing fortunes in many languages (I downloaded fortunes-es as my native language is spanish...)

[fng]

Gentoo had like a dozen of extra fortune packages in portage. Eg. futurama, simpsons, calvin and hobbes, movie quotes, offensive, ....

We should get these into universe/multiverse.

[crazybill]

This is exactly what I placed on my current machine:

edited the last line of /etc/bash.bashrc with

fortune -s | cowsay -n -f tux.cow

and edited the text intro in /etc/motd

and produced this login screen:


Linux ubuntu1 2.6.10-5-386 #1 Tue Apr 5 12:12:40 UTC 2005 i586 GNU/Linux

Welcome to cvc.org's Ubuntu Linux (Hoary Hedghog 5.04) ACC server:

PENGUIN POWER!!

Last login: Fri May 6 15:09:35 2005 from 66.17.34.8
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
/ It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion \
| that makes horse-races. |
\ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" /
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/

crazybill@ubuntu1:~ $

[Karma_Police]

I placed this at bash.bashrc:


cow_images=(apt beavis.zen bong bud-frogs bunny cheese cower daemon default dragon dragon-and-cow elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep ghostbusters head-in hellokitty kiss kitty koala kosh luke-koala mech-and-cow meow milk moofasa moose mutilated ren satanic sheep skeleton small sodomized stegosaurus stimpy supermilker surgery telebears three-eyes turkey turtle tux udder vader vader-koala www)

cow_random=RANDOM%47

fortune | cowsay -n -f ${cow_images[cow_random]}



to get random cow pictures everytime. Those are all the cow pictures I have installed from synaptic.

I'm not very good at bash, so I gess we could optimize it by getting the output from "cowsay -l" (minus the first line) to the cow_images array... another way to improve it would be to randomize the eyes and thong flags, but I guess that would be a bit too much. :P

[matthew]

This is just silly...and I love it. This will now be standard on all my *nix boxes.

[doclivingston]

# cp /usr/games/fortune /usr/bin/fortune

It's probably better to do
ln -s /usr/games/fortune /usr/bin/fortune so that odd things won't happen if you update fortune.

But fortune and cowsay are cool.

[Nameless_one]

I guess this might be the place to ask how I can stop fortune from displaying fortunes from certain files :)

[Rinon]

I placed this at bash.bashrc:


cow_images=(apt beavis.zen bong bud-frogs bunny cheese cower daemon default dragon dragon-and-cow elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep ghostbusters head-in hellokitty kiss kitty koala kosh luke-koala mech-and-cow meow milk moofasa moose mutilated ren satanic sheep skeleton small sodomized stegosaurus stimpy supermilker surgery telebears three-eyes turkey turtle tux udder vader vader-koala www)

cow_random=RANDOM%47

fortune | cowsay -n -f ${cow_images[cow_random]}



to get random cow pictures everytime. Those are all the cow pictures I have installed from synaptic.

I'm not very good at bash, so I gess we could optimize it by getting the output from "cowsay -l" (minus the first line) to the cow_images array... another way to improve it would be to randomize the eyes and thong flags, but I guess that would be a bit too much. :P

Here's an improvement on this script that doesn't require a list of cow files:

if [ !$COWPATH ]
then
COWPATH='/usr/share/cowsay/cows/'
fi

cow_file_length=`ls -1 $COWPATH | wc -l`

RANDOM=$$ # initialized the random seed with the process id of this script
let "random_line = $RANDOM % $cow_file_length + 1"
cow=`ls -1 $COWPATH | head -n $random_line | tail -n 1`

fortune | cowsay -n -f $cow

Enjoy! :)

[Onimae]

I just want to say that this is fantastic. I had just read up on fortune from the Deb Package of the day and noted that people had this pop up in their terminals whenever they started them. This is just what I was looking for. Thank you, good sirs and ladies for brightening this mans terminal world :).

Another reason why everyone should have a *nix system is this right here.

Onimae

[psoup1965]

This is all great advice. However, do not edit /etc/motd... this is a generated file. It will be overwritten, instead if you want to change the message perform: sudo vi /etc/motd.tail

;)

[asomad]

Here's an improvement on this script that doesn't require a list of cow files:

if [ !$COWPATH ]
then
COWPATH='/usr/share/cowsay/cows/'
fi

cow_file_length=`ls -1 $COWPATH | wc -l`

RANDOM=$$ # initialized the random seed with the process id of this script
let "random_line = $RANDOM % $cow_file_length + 1"
cow=`ls -1 $COWPATH | head -n $random_line | tail -n 1`

fortune | cowsay -n -f $cowEnjoy! :)


Ive put fortune | cowsay in my .bashrc on almost evey distro I've installed. I always thought it would be cool to have a switch for random cows. you should contact the developer and try to work this tiny bit of code in!

AND THANKS!

[optimuscream]

same function with much much less lines : :D


randlst=`ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | sort -R | head -1`
fortune | cowsay -n -f $randlst

[Jorox]

A slight modification:

With random eyes for the cows and all fortune cookies - offensive and nonoffensive:


randlst=`ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | sort -R | head -1`
STR=('b' 'd' 'g' 'p' 's' 't' 'w' 'y')
k=$RANDOM%8

fortune -a | cowsay -${STR[${k}]} -n -f $randlst

(My first bash script :) )