In message <Pine.NEB.4.02.9901190047270.2143-100000@miyu.feyrer.net>,
Hubert Feyrer writes:
>
>putting information before the login prompt via /etc/gettytab is awkward,
>having an /etc/issue file like Solaris etc. would come in handy for some
>situations. The places to implement this are getty and telnetd.
>
>The general idea is to have a bf=-field in /etc/gettytab for a terminal
>type, denoting a "banner file" that is displayed prior to the "im" initial
>message. Any %-macros in /etc/issue (or whatever the "bf" entry points to)  
>are expanded as in the "im" message. 
>
>A patch that does all this for getty can be found at
>http://rfhs8012.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/etc.issue-patch, if someone wants
>to finish this for telnetd, you could make some people happy (i guess?).

Sounds great!  I just got done making getty do the right thing with
really long "im=" clauses, and this seems like a much better and simpler
solution.  I noticed that FreeBSD supplies this functionality using
the "if=" keyword, so perhaps we ought to do the same?

I'll be happy to do up the telnetd hacks.

Kevin
kml@nas.nasa.gov