guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (05/18/89)
>In section 4 of every Sys V manual I have seen there is a very short manual >page about the file "/etc/issue" and how it is printed as a login message by >getty. ... >The trouble is it doesn't work as advertised, and there's no docs for the >mysterious "lines" file. The manual is only an approximation of reality (sort of like the output of "ps" :-)), and isn't always maintained perfectly. This problem isn't unique to AT&T; other suppliers (commercial or, ahem, academic) of UNIX systems tend to have the same problem. The problem is that in S5R3, at least, the code to print "/etc/issue" is within an #ifdef, and the #ifdef isn't turned on by default. Nevertheless, the man page is still there in the S5R3 documentation. I suspect this feature dates back to an old internal-to-AT&T version of UNIX; the "issue or project identification" stuff is probably some internal-to-AT&T notion. The "lines" file may have been the moral equivalent of "/etc/ttys" or "/etc/inittab" in that version. It might actually be a useful feature for some sites, so perhaps it should be turned on by default; after all, it costs you little if you *don't* want a pre-login-prompt banner - just don't have an "/etc/issue" file. The documentation should, of course, be brought up to date, with no reference to the "lines" file, and no mention of an "issue or project identification".