As I went through the process of removing all this I had to learn about the update-motd system, since I quickly found that the solution wasn't a simple:
[sourcecode language="bash"]$ sudo echo "" > /etc/motd[/sourcecode]
So I cooked up a bash script to spit out some information about the system every time I log into the server. The output looks like this:
Create or edit update-motd's 00-header file.
[sourcecode language="bash"]$ sudo vi /etc/update-motd.d/00-header[/sourcecode]
And here's the source of the bash script:
[sourcecode language="bash"]#!/bin/sh
[ -r /etc/lsb-release ] && . /etc/lsb-release
if [ -z "$DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION" ] && [ -x /usr/bin/lsb_release ]; then
# Fall back to using the very slow lsb_release utility
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=$(lsb_release -s -d)
fi
UPTIME=`uptime | awk '{if ($4 == "day," || $4 == "days,") print $3, $4, $5; else print $3}' | awk -F: '{print $1, "hrs", $2, "mins"}' | sed 's/,//g'`
LOADAVG=`uptime | awk '{if ($4 == "day," || $4 == "days,") print $10, $11, $12; else print $8, $9, $10}'`
PROCCOUNT=`ps -l | wc -l`
PROCCOUNT=`expr $PROCCOUNT - 4`
IP=$(/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr" | awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}')
echo -e "
==============: System Info :===================
Hostname: `hostname`
Address: $IP
Distro: $DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION
Kernel: `uname -r`
Uptime: $UPTIME
Load Avgs: $LOADAVG
Processes: $PROCCOUNT
==============: Memory Info :===================
Total: `cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemTotal | awk {'print $2'}` kB
Free: `cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemFree | awk {'print $2'}` kB
Lowest: `cat /proc/meminfo | grep LowFree | awk {'print $2'}` kB
===============: Disk Info :===================="
df -h[/sourcecode]