Go2Linux | Linux Operating System

Introduction

Opensshd has a nice feature, that lets you present a welcome message to users who are login in to the Linux server. This feature is useful if you need to present a warning or any other message to users before they log into the system.

A good example could be something like this message:

“Please be responsible while you are logged into this server, any bad action will be recorded, and legal actions will taken”

How to enable sshd banner

First you need to create the Banner that will be displayed by ssh server. So create a file that will have that banner.

vim /etc/ssh/ssh-banner-message.txt

You may use any other text editor, I like vim.

There you can add the message, let’s follow the example above:

Please be responsible while you are logged into this server, any bad action will be recorded, and legal actions will taken

Now configure sshd to show your banner to users trying to log into the server.

Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config

vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for this line, or create if none exists.

Banner /etc/ssh/ssh-banner-message.txt

Of course you can point Banner to any other file, where you have the message to want to be displayed.

Now, restart Opensshd

/etc/rc.d/rc.ssh restart

For Slackware users.

/etc/rc.d/sshd restart

For Arch Linux users.

/etc/init.d/sshd restart

For Debian/Ubuntu users.

Test sshd banner

Log into your own computer you can do it from the same server.

ssh localhost

You should see something like this:

bash-4.1$ ssh localhost
Please be responsible while you are logged into this server, any bad action will be recorded, and legal actions will taken

ggarron@localhost's password: 

You are done.