UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Anyone know how to change the location of the MOTD file from the default /etc/motd?

An annoying person with root access has found out how to edit the file and change my MOTDs.

Help me.

What OS are you using?
If it's Linux, you can attempt to deter him using attributes...

Otherwise, restrict his access...

if he has root access he can do much more than this... find him one way or another... start by changing the root password...

If you are the System Administrator then you should change the root password and keep it a secret from the users. For reasons of security, I would suggest that root password should be changed at regular intervals (say, once a month) or if an unauthorised person needs to gain temporary root access, change it and give them the CHANGED root password then change it back when they are finished.

If you have a Solaris sytem, you could set the system up so that only the console can log in as root then set up 'su logging'. Then anyone who wants to go in as root will have to 'su' to root at which time a log of the user entering root will be put in /var/adm/sulog. You should be able to find out which user is doing it, if you don't know, and you'll have evidence of them gaining access to root (through 'su').

Running Mandrake, but to be honest I'm taking a class and the teacher saw fit to give most of the users root access. =/ So changing the password is out of the question. Thank you for the replies. =)


Edit: My reasoning though was, that there's more than likely a single line of code in the login script, that points to /etc/motd as the message of the day file. Might anyone know how to change this?

Try this, it's most likely to throw off a semi-beginning user:
(as root)
# chattr +i /etc/motd

This makes the file "immutable" (sp?), so it cannot be changed, deleted, linked to, etc... even to the root user, I believe. This is, of course, until he figures out why the access will be denied, and runs chattr -i /etc/motd as root...

see the man page for chattr and lsattr for more info.

I thank you much sir.