Find yourself logging into MANY servers at a time via SSH?

It can become confusing at times to be sure which server you are logged into, especially when you have networks that are very similar.

My solution (perhaps you have a better one, if so share it in the comments) is to use a combination of a welcome message and logon scripts to give me computer information when I logon to ensure that I am on the right machine and also give me a readout of important processes that are running.

Ok so this assumes that you already have your linux server and you can ssh into it.

I’m on a windows box at work so I have already installed an X window (we can touch on that on a later date) and Putty.

Download PUTTY here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

When you connect, I login as ROOT:

Then when I login, I am greeted with a welcome message:

I had to hide some of the text there but you can get the idea.

At this time, I also get an IM alert of my login since I set it up to alert me when someone logs in as ROOT.

I used TROPO for the FREE IM notifications. http://TROPO.com

To edit the files, use NANO or Gedit:

full command:

nano /etc/motd

^ static text

nano /etc/profile

^ scripts

My URL I am curling for tropo is:

curl --silent "https://api.tropo.com/1.0/sessions?action=create&token=SecretTokenGoesHere&msg=ROOT+shell+access+has+been+granted+on+`hostname`+on+`date +"%m-%d-%Y"`+at+`date +"%H"`%3A`date +"%M"``date +"%p"`&destination=IMAddressHere%40gmail.com&network=jabber" > log.txt