For your examples, local mail is more fit than anything. The user may want to look back to past notifications, archive, delete, read later etc. It's easy, jus

For your examples, local mail is more fit than anything. The user may want to look back to past notifications, archive, delete, read later etc. It's easy, just run "mail <user>", or: mail -s '<subject>' $(awk -F: '/^<group-name>/ {print $4;}' /etc/group | tr , ' ') Good use of motd: pointers to essential reading for new users, like a tutorial, some man pages, etc.; contact information, to sysadmins, product help desk etc. The user reads it to get clues on how to get going with the system, then runs 'touch $HOME/.hushlogin' to silence it. Edit: Besides, the manual does not tell you that simply breaking the symlink will do the desired effect.