Mix in some CLI fun on your server

This post is directed at Ubuntu and Debian server admins. As all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, it is imperative that you immediately make your server more fun. If you do not get a little smile when you log into your server via SSH, then something is terribly wrong! Avoid dullness by all means.

Here I will show how to add and use figlet, fortune, cowsay and xmlstarlet to have big banners, random quotes’n'quips, talking cows and word of the day appear when using SSH to access your server.

FIGlet is a program for making large letters out of ordinary text.

FIGlet project: http://www.figlet.org/

Fortune is a simple program that displays a random message from a database of quotations.

Cowsay is a filter that takes text and displays a cow saying it.

Cowsay project page: http://www.nog.net/~tony/warez/cowsay.shtml

Cowsay article: http://linuxgazette.net/issue67/orr.html

XMLStarlet is a set of command line utilities (tools) which can be used to transform, query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using simple set of shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands.

XMLSartlet project page: http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/overview.php

Adding Universe and Multiverse Repository in Ubuntu

These packages are in the Universe and Multiverse repositories. If you need to add these repositories, just un-remark the pertinent lines in /etc/apt/sources.list and run aptitude update:

First, make a backup of the original /etc/apt/sources.list file.

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.original

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Un-remark the universe and multiverse lines (remove the leading # character) so the lines look something like this:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse

Finish by retrieving the updated package lists to your system with:

sudo aptitude update

By the way, to search for packages in the Ubuntu packages repositories, visit:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/

Figlet

Figlet creates character graphic block letter banners. Thus:

media2

becomes…

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

Install Figlet

On an Unbuntu/Debian system, install figlet like this:

sudo aptitude install figlet

The following will create the media2 banner, as above:

figlet -f slant media2

Modifying Message of the Day

Once you are satisfied with the output of figlet, you can have your character graphics banner appear whenever a user uses SSH to access the server, just modify the /etc/motd.tail file with:

sudo figlet -f slant media2 >>/etc/motd.tail

Bingo, whenever a user logs into the media2 server then will see your nifty banner! A little dullness have been bannished.

Installing xmlstarlet, cowsay and fortune

These are the commands we’ll be using to offer some fresh content on every login.

sudo aptitude install xmlstarlet cowsay fortune

Putting it all together

Modify the /etc/bash.bashrc file. This affects all users that use bash as their default shell.

fortune -a | cowsay -f $(ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | shuf | head -n1)

echo -n "word of the day: "
/usr/bin/xmlstarlet sel --net -t -m "/rss/channel/item/description" -v "." "http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss"

The fortune command pops out a random quip, piped into cowsay, which is configured here with -f to use a random character graphic image. Then, word of the day is sourced from an RSS feed with xmlstarlet.

With everything, here is an example of what will appear when your SSH into your server:

Linux ijuki 2.6.32-x86_64-somewhere #1 SMP Sat Dec 5 16:55:26 UTC 2009 x86_64

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

Last login: Sun May  2 18:39:14 2010 from 00.000.000.000
 ________________________________________
/ Everything that you know is wrong, but \
\ you can be straightened out.           /
 ----------------------------------------
       \    ____
        \  /    \
          | ^__^ |
          | (oo) |______
          | (__) |      )\/\
           \____/|----w |
                ||     ||

	         Moofasa
word of the day: sesquipedalianism: given to using long words.