Question

Is it possible to define a function in the MOTD on a Ubuntu box?

I have the following in my motd.tail file:

#!/bin/sh
? () { echo "$*" | bc -l; }
echo
date
echo

However the function definition doesn’t work if I login to the box, i.e.:

? 10*2
?: command not found

Any ideas on how I can define the function?

Thanks

Answer 1

Most distros have a system-wide bashrc file that is suited for things like this.

On Debian, this file is: /etc/bash.bashrc