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ajax
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Motd discussion
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Jul 20 00:38 UTC 1996 |
There was a mail thread circulating recently among people who edit the
motd (message of the day) file that's displayed when people log on to Grex.
It got rather large recently, and so we were discussing what could be
removed. Now that it's smaller again, there was some discussion of how
to keep it better organized in the future, and I figured this would be a
good co-op discussion.
One suggestion was
"...something to think about: put the begging messages first;
system announcements next, and local-ish messages at the bottom.
Then tell people about the order. That way, the people who aren't
local would know that they could skip the bottom portion. Does
that sound like it might help the situation?"
Another suggestion was not putting the "grex was down for 10 minutes"
messages at the top, or not putting them in at all.
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| 57 responses total. |
bruin
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response 1 of 57:
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Jul 20 01:47 UTC 1996 |
My favorite MOTD was "Maggie did it!" when it revealed that the youngest
member of "The Simpsons" shot Mr. Burns.
Correction - "...when it was revealed..."
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brighn
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response 2 of 57:
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Jul 20 04:00 UTC 1996 |
MOTD organization is a good thing. The social announcements -- birthdays,
GNO and Grex Walk, and the like -- should definitely go near the bottom. I'd
put system changes and grex-down messages at the top.
If the begging messages are before the system change announcements, I wouldn't
read the system change announcements. I know Grex needs money. Not much I
can do about it.
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janc
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response 3 of 57:
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Jul 20 04:06 UTC 1996 |
When the motd gets long, the messages at the top are the hard ones to read.
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tsty
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response 4 of 57:
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Jul 20 09:51 UTC 1996 |
beg at the top; grovel at the bottom.
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davel
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response 5 of 57:
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Jul 20 16:25 UTC 1996 |
I'd guess that a lot of people *start* reading at the beginning, & stop when
they see a lot of stuff they're not interested in. I know I do.
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bjorn
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response 6 of 57:
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Jul 20 16:29 UTC 1996 |
That would be me as well. I don't read it if there's a lot there - it saves
time that way.
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adbarr
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response 7 of 57:
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Jul 20 23:26 UTC 1996 |
Hm. How about Grex Condensed Conferences -- only the "good" stuff? Is there
an editor in the house?
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tsty
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response 8 of 57:
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Jul 21 02:06 UTC 1996 |
<<it's called: intro.cf >>>
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popcorn
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response 9 of 57:
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Jul 21 06:09 UTC 1996 |
I'd rather not make a lot of additional rules -- we've already got more than
I'd like. My thought is that the only rule we need is that people who put
stuff in the motd try to keep things short and take them out sooner rather
than later. Certainly, I'm guilty of more motd bloat than probably everybody
else on Grex added together, and I can do a lot better at curbing motd bloat
than I've been doing.
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pfv
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response 10 of 57:
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Jul 21 16:48 UTC 1996 |
YEah, the bloated motd is a major pain in the tukus...
Is there some way to hierarchial-manage the motd such that interested
users can do a !thisstuff or !thatstuff for greater info?
I wrote a !motd for myself, but it seems that (like certain conf-headers)
the motd simply breeds out of control.. And, speaking of conf-headers -
is there a way to supress the waste of time those headers represent?
Also, what and where is the 'available' conf-filter?
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remmers
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response 11 of 57:
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Jul 21 17:37 UTC 1996 |
You can suppress conference login screens by putting the lines
define linmsg "\n"
define loutmsg "\n"
in your .cfonce file.
If by "the 'available' conf-filter" you mean the thing that enables
you to filter out responses by selected users, it's a command
called "twit". Basically, you put a line in your .cfonce file that
looks like
define pager "twit user1 user2 user3 | more"
Then Picospan will not show you responses by the listed users.
For "more" substitute whatever pager you normally use.
I have a more elaborate filtering arrangement set up in my .cfonce
file that allows me to turn filtering on or off at any time. This
is handy if you don't like to read a particular user's responses
in certain conferences but don't mind reading them in other
conferences. With this setup, I can just type "twit" to turn
filtering on and "notwit" to turn it off. Sorta like phaser
shields. See the files .cfonce, .cftwit, and .cfnotwit in my .cfdir
directory to see how this is done.
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pfv
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response 12 of 57:
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Jul 21 18:01 UTC 1996 |
Thanks, john - for the advice/info and suggestion... I shall look into
this RSN (M$tm)
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davel
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response 13 of 57:
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Jul 21 18:16 UTC 1996 |
To use the Picospan twit filter John gave, you may need to reset the format
of your headings as well. If it doesn't work right out of the box, there's
a discussion in Info (with, I think, a title involving the words "twit
filter").
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pfv
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response 14 of 57:
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Jul 21 18:58 UTC 1996 |
thanks.. will try it soon - too many projects, not enough sleep ;-)
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remmers
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response 15 of 57:
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Jul 21 19:41 UTC 1996 |
Right - forgot about the need to change iseps and rseps to make the
filter work. But what you need to do in that regard can be gleaned
from the abovementioned files.
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adbarr
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response 16 of 57:
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Jul 22 01:33 UTC 1996 |
Is there some way to set up all these filters so a user could just talk
to him/her self and not be bothered by anybody. It might, or it might not,
reduce disagreements. But then, I would miss chelsea, and remmers, and . .
. .
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ajax
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response 17 of 57:
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Jul 22 02:52 UTC 1996 |
Arnold, that can be accomplished with a "serial loop-back cable."
Among other advantages, you can forget that paltry 9600 bps or 28.8
kbps connection, and crank it up to 115.2 kbps!
Back on the motd topic, for fairly minor system announcements, how
about putting them in the System Announcements item in Agora? For
example, sometimes the motd has two or three separate announcements,
double-spaced, along the lines of "Grex was down from 11:00 to 11:15"
and "Grex was off the net last night, but is back now." It's great
to be kept informed of these things, and I am interested in and
appreciate the info, but I'm not sure it's of general enough interest
to warrant being in the motd. Another possibility would be to stick
them in a publicly readable log file somewhere, if entering stuff in
Agora is too inconvenient (it's certainly slower than editing a file).
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popcorn
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response 18 of 57:
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Jul 22 03:30 UTC 1996 |
Originally we used to put those "Grex was down" messages in the motd because
otherwise staff would be deluged by "what was wrong with Grex at 2:00
yesterday?" mail messages. But we haven't had a question like that in a long
time now. So I'd think it would be OK to move those messages to the system
announcements message in agora.
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nephi
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response 19 of 57:
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Jul 22 05:34 UTC 1996 |
I like Rob's idea of having a "downtime" command that anyone can run to see
what downtime we've had. Then, someone can edit a downtime file every time
we have been offline, instead of editting the MOTD.
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davel
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response 20 of 57:
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Jul 22 15:05 UTC 1996 |
That would be nice. Yes, we used to have *lots* of downtime, & it did indeed
generate anxious queries. More stable hardware is *wonderful*.
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adbarr
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response 21 of 57:
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Jul 24 00:28 UTC 1996 |
Rob (#17) I tried that, but the dang thing gave me an ear infection!
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gull
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response 22 of 57:
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Jul 24 06:01 UTC 1996 |
Two questions. (1) When I telnet to Grex from an Xterm window, the
screen clears right after the MOTD but before the mail messages, I.e.
right when the terminal settings are made. It's not even in the
scrollback. This makes it hard for me to read the MOTD; how can I fix it?
(2) Is there some way the MOTD could be set up so that it only shows the
parts that have changed since last time you logged in? That kind of
'incremental MOTD' would reduce bloat quite a bit, and make it easier to
keep track of new stuff.
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ajax
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response 23 of 57:
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Jul 24 12:46 UTC 1996 |
For question 2, yes. First, create a file called ".hushlogin" in
your home directory. This suppresses the automatic display of the
motd when you log in. Then add the following to your login script
where it will be executed:
diff /etc/motd lastmotd | grep ">"
cp /etc/motd lastmotd
That displays the additions to the current motd, since the last
copy you saw, then copies the current motd to your copy. It won't
work the first time through, unless you issue the "cp" (copy)
command separately, but will work thereafter. One drawback is
that this is slower than just viewing the regular motd.
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popcorn
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response 24 of 57:
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Jul 24 16:00 UTC 1996 |
David, I'm guessing that your xterm uses "vt220" as its terminal type, and
that Grex's vt220 termcap clears the screen when it is initialized. Could
you do an "!echo $TERM" to check what Grex thinks your terminal type is set
to, and then enter the results here? Whichever termcap you're using needs
to be fixed on Grex.
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