Reliable Penguin is sharing a tiny treat for your terminals: a Halloween‑themed MOTD generator that works on everything from CentOS 7 to today.
Even production boxes deserve a bit of pumpkin spice.
What it is
A portable, POSIX‑sh script that prints a Halloween banner with centered headers (title, hostname, date) and classic ASCII art—bat, ghost, pumpkin, cat, or spider. Color is off by default for maximum compatibility; flip it on with --color.
- Portable: plain
sh, no bash‑isms required - Centered & width‑aware: auto‑detects width or accept
--width N - Pick your familiar:
--art=bat|ghost|pumpkin|cat|spider|random - Safe for old terminals: defaults to no color; 16‑color opt‑in
Get it
Clone or grab the script from the repo:
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# Repo: <add your repo URL here> # Example install sudo cp halloween-motd /usr/local/bin/ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/halloween-motd |
Using
update-motd.d? Drop a one‑liner wrapper in/etc/update-motd.d/50-halloweenthat callshalloween-motd --stdout.
Use it
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# Plain (no color) halloween-motd --stdout # With color (16‑color safe) halloween-motd --stdout --color # Pin your favorite art halloween-motd --stdout --art=ghost # Exact width (handy for narrow banners) halloween-motd --stdout --width=60 |
To write a static /etc/motd (one‑time), run:
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sudo halloween-motd --file --width=80 --color |
Sample (cat @ 45 cols)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 🕸️ Happy Halloween 🎃 rpjump1.reliablepenguin.com Friday, October 31, 2025 /\_/\ ( o.o ) > ^ < ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Reliable Penguin, Inc.
This project is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
You are free to share and adapt this work with attribution, for non‑commercial purposes only. Commercial use requires prior written permission from Reliable Penguin, Inc.
Happy haunting, and happy hacking! 🦇👻
