GNet Solutions » FreeBSD Administration

I recently wanted to add the IP address of my development FreeBSD VMs to the console pre-login prompt, sparing me the time of logging in just to ifconfig once so I can ssh into the VM. Unfortunately FreeBSD does not use /etc/issues like its Linux counterparts, but relies on /etc/gettytab and uses /etc/issue as a shim for text without the use of any macros.

This is how I added the IP address of my machine to the pre-login console prompt on FreeBSD 11.

update-issue script¶

• Create an update-issue script:
  

  vi /usr/local/etc/rc.d/update-issue
  

  • And add the following:
    

    #!/bin/sh
    
    # PROVIDE: update-issue
    # REQUIRE: NETWORKING syslogd
    # KEYWORD:
    
    . /etc/rc.subr
    
    IPADDRESSESV4=$(ifconfig em0 | grep inet | awk '{print $2}')
    
    for IPADDRESS in $IPADDRESSESV4;
            do
                    printf "IP: $IPADDRESS" > /etc/issue
            done;
    
    echo "" >> /etc/issue
    

• Make the script executable:
  

  chmod +x /usr/local/etc/rc.d/update-issue
  

• Start and enable the script at boot:
  

  echo 'update_issue_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
  service update-issue start
  

Resources¶

• http://www.freebsddiary.org/prelogin.php
• https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/61798/