Simple spicing up the ubuntu server motd

On the lighter side of servers, those of us who like a little information when they login might like the following. An overview of cpu load, memory usage, disc space free for example. Or a warning that says you still have some updates to install.
Luckily there's a package that easily does this.
Just install landscape-common (which takes several python and other packages along) as:
   apt-get install landscape-common


This package is part of the new cloud services from Ubuntu, which if your just starting with ubuntu is probably not all that interesting so I'll leave it at that.  Next (logout and) login to your server for the new login

putty display of a login on my new 10.10 server

The above 'helpful message' part welcoming you to Ubuntu, and where you can find the documentation can be removed with:

     rm /etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text

or of course you can put your own text or 'ascii art' into it so it shows up on login.

You can also edit the files in /etc/update-motd.d/ so they show other things as well.. it's a lot of fun to play around with tbh :)

note: if you just want something simple displayed, it might be wisest do put that in /etc/motd.tail