7 ms·

motd

82 points by 0x0 9y ago

kronos29296 9y ago
Now this is either poor marketing or poor taste. They tried with desktop with Amazon applets now /etc/motd for server guys. This is really bad for ubuntu
krzrak 9y ago
Really disappointing.
sandstrom 9y ago
As long as security info etc. is present and prominent I don't mind if it's accompanied by entertaining tidbits.
- gargravarr 9y ago
  At the same time, it's considered poor practise to give servers open internet access. The only outgoing connections that should be allowed are to update servers. I'd second disabling this 'feature' on a server - it seems very unnecessary to get a MOTD from the internet in the first place, let alone if there's going to be advertising in it.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    And updates are ideally pulled from a local cache so that only one server in the DMZ needs to connect to Ubuntu's server. It's disappointing that in 2017 no Linux vendor ships with a default-denial Internet firewall configuration but I suppose stories like this explain why.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      > It's disappointing that in 2017 no Linux vendor ships with a default-denial Internet firewall configuration but I suppose stories like this explain why. I don't believe that's accurate. On openSUSE and SLE you have SuSEFirewall2 which has such a configuration (from memory) and I would be surprised if RHEL doesn't have such a configuration.
- dustinkirkland 9y ago
  That's exactly right! Think of it, like Google's doodle that sometimes appears above the search bar. Interesting, fun facts, that likely have nothing to do with what you're Googling ;-)
justinclift 9y ago
Canonical, the Microsoft of Linux. ;) (for anyone wondering, that's a comment on ethics)
stephenr 9y ago
It still baffles me why people choose Ubuntu for a server. Canonical has a history of doing weird things: how many times have they diverged from upstream with some in-house solution that never quite works out. The 6 monthly releases aren't realistic for business, who use LTS, at which point you may as well use Debian and back ports/vendor repos for software you need more updated versions of.
- matt4077 9y ago
  I used to use Debian, and Gentoo before that. I still remember spending days trying to get a somewhat recent version of php to compile on these systems. Around the time I tried Ubuntu, I started encountering problems less and less. Maybe I got better, maybe all distributions got better, or maybe Ubuntu is more robust. I just don't feel any pain that would motivate me to try other distributions. Ubuntu also seems to be the de-facto standard, and anything with install instructions will first cover Ubuntu.
  - gargravarr 9y ago
    Debian has the problem that its packages are older, so if you need specific versions of PHP or other runtimes, you are much better off using Ubuntu. It's worth noting that Debian can be made to support PPAs as well, but all this is native to Ubuntu. I can't deny the Ubuntu community is extensive and there are in-depth articles covering setup of just about anything on Ubuntu. Fortunately, owing to the Debian basis, it's fairly easy to convert the same tutorials to run on Debian.
    - philamonster 9y ago
      https://www.dotdeb.org/ https://www.dotdeb.org/ usually handles needs for more common late release packages in Debian.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      The main issue is trying to use the distro packages for dependencies of the things you'll actually use the server for. Over in the Python world I'd be perfectly happy to use Debian. I'd just use it only to provide an operating system; then I'd compile the version of Python I want, and use virtualenvs and pip for managing the actual application code and dependencies.
matt4077 9y ago
Good for them. Ubuntu does lots of good work that benefit the whole community, and if this allows them to stay in business, and pay people well to write open-source software, I'm not complaining. Considering the example shown (which I also get logging in) is about HBO's use of Tensorflow, this also happens to be the best-targeted ad I've seen in a while. At that level, advertising actually does become something that's valuable/interesting for the recipient. And if not, it takes about 10 seconds to disable.
- revmoo 9y ago
  It has to make unauthorized connections to pull down ads. No, this is not acceptable.
- ckastner 9y ago
  I don't think that the advertisement itself is the issue, but rather the medium chosen for it. Speaking for myself, I expect /etc/motd to contain information deemed relevant to me by the responsible sysadmin. I feel like this is the hi-jacking of a well-established communications channel, for ads no less.
throwanem 9y ago
Who leaves the default motd in place after an install?
- revmoo 9y ago
  Admins that don't have autism
- mort96 9y ago
  I do?
  - thinkMOAR 9y ago
    Then you apparently don't work on PCI grade machines. Many particular industry security standards dictate you put a 'if you are not authorised disconnect now' message in the motd.
    - nsebban 9y ago
      I wish there was a way to know how many evil-doers cancelled their evil plans after reading that kind of MOTD.
      - detaro 9y ago
        AFAIK the theory is that it helps with prosecution - if they got this prompt they clearly were told where they are and that they are not welcome and can't try to excuse themselves through some mistake or not knowing that they shouldn't access.
      - bubblethink 9y ago
        Chip's defense from the Dave Chappelle bit where he says, "I didn't know I couldn't do that"
    - wichert 9y ago
      To be a bit pedantic: I would expect that kind of message to be put in /etc/issue so it is shown before login. /etc/motd is only shown after a successful login, which is a bit late for such a warning.
mr_overalls 9y ago
I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop for a while, working as a software dev. Maybe it's time to switch. What other distro is a competitor in this space? (I.e., not a minimalist distro, easy to use, with plenty of available software?) Fedora? Mint?
- gargravarr 9y ago
  Ubuntu as an end-user OS is fine, this discussion is specifically for servers. I personally use Mint though, purely for the Cinnamon GUI. Mint is basically Ubuntu underneath so there's no reason to switch.
- Noctix 9y ago
  Fedora, Debian (if you still want to use apt) or OpenSUSE.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Arch
  - sk1pper 9y ago
    I haven't used Arch in years, but I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a minimalist distro.
    - romanovcode 9y ago
      But isn't that what OP was asking for?
- wdfx 9y ago
  I've been using Elementary OS for a year or so. Yes, it is based on Ubuntu, but I find the desktop env much nicer.
stinos 9y ago
Instead, https://motd.ubuntu.com https://motd.ubuntu.com should show relevant items to those that use Ubuntu Server (relevant security issues, etc), instead of items for desktop users. Shouldn't that be more like "Instead, Ubuntu should not fetch the motd from the internet by default, but have this feature as opt-in"?
- wdfx 9y ago
  Reading the bug report, this did lead me to wonder what happens when one tries to log in to an Ubuntu server which is behind a firewall and without internet access. Does this nonsense cause a timeout delay in getting into the box ?
  - sebcat 9y ago
    https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg5191369.html https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/ms... "[Bug 1691901] [NEW] 50-motd-news costs 5 seconds every login on disconnected systems"
    - revmoo 9y ago
      Jesus Christ
  - dustinkirkland 9y ago
    Howdy! I'm the author of the code in question, a bug in said code, and the fix to the bug in the code :-) By design: - Asynchronously, about 60 seconds after boot, a systemd timer fires which runs "/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force" - It sources 3 admin-editable config variables in /etc/default/motd-news. The defaults are: ENABLED=1, URLS="https://motd.ubuntu.com" https://motd.ubuntu.com", WAIT="5" - The admin can disable it entirely (ENABLED=0), change or add other MOTD news sources (your corporate IT team could run its own), and change the wait time in seconds - If it's enabled, that systemd timer job will loop over each of the URLS (note, that it's important that these should be https with valid SSL certificates), trim them to 80 characters per line, and a maximum of 10 lines, and concatenate them to a cache file in /var/cache/motd-news - Every ~12 hours thereafter (with a little bit of random timer fuzzing), this systemd timer job will re-run and update the /var/cache/motd-news - Upon login, the contents of /var/cache/motd-news is just printed to screen. There was a bug (fixed now, working its way through the Ubuntu update process), in that an empty cache file was not getting, if the fetch failed, so the fetch was retried every time (and failed every time, with the $WAIT delay of 5 seconds). Obviously, it was a simple fix. As I am generally responsible for this feature in Ubuntu (as the Ubuntu Product Manager for the design, and the Ubuntu Core Developer for the implementation) I'll also respond to the discussion about this feature being included in Ubuntu at all... - Back in 2009, Ubuntu was the first distribution to add the concept of a "dynamic MOTD", by introducing the /etc/update-motd.d/* structure of scripts. I originally implemented it for Landscape (a commercial package management system by Canonical), but it has since also been adopted by Debian, Amazon Linux, and others. - It's a flexible framework that enables distro packages or administrators to add executable scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/* to generate informative, interesting messages displayed at login. - This was quite interesting, in that for almost 40 years of Linux/UNIX, the "Message of the Day" was anything but that... It was a message that was created at one point in time, when the distro released, and that's about it. And we managed to change that. - If you look in your Ubuntu's /etc/update-motd.d/, you'll see a set of scripts. One prints the generic "welcome" banner. The next one prints 3 links, as to where to find help. You'll also find one that counts and displays the number of package updates available for the local system. Another tells you if a reboot is required. - All of these are locally generated, based on local information available on the system. - In Ubuntu 17.04, we added /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news. This is the script who's design is described above. The motivation is threefold: * Sometimes, there's critical information that either we, the distro, or perhaps even the local IT administrator of a fleet of systems needs to communicate to users at login. Think, "ShellShock", "Heartbleed", "StackClash". This seems to happen every few months, in the current state of the world. * Other times, we need to communicate something about the distribution. EoL messages, new feature availability, etc. * And sometimes, it's just a matter of presenting a fun fact. News from the world of Ubuntu. Or even your own IT department. Such was the case with the Silicon Valley / HBO message. It was just an interesting tidbit of potpourri from the world of Ubuntu. Last week's message actually announced an Ubuntu conference in Latin America. The week before, we linked to an article asking for feedback on Kubuntu. Before that, we announced the availability of Extended Security Maintenance updates for 12.04. And so on. - There is a team of engineering managers at Canonical (the ~ubuntu-motd team in Launchpad), all of who have shared write access to the source code repository (lp:ubuntu-motd in Launchpad). Going forward, we're going to review one another's proposed message merges. In fact, that's an open source repository. You're welcome to propose your own messages for merging, if you have a well formatted, informative message for Ubuntu users. We'll be happy to review and include them in the future. As always, I'm impressed with the critical analysis of the HackerNews community. We, the Ubuntu ecosystem, are held by the HN community to a very high standard, and we're quite humbled by that. Thank you for the continued feedback and response. Cheers, Dustin
smacktoward 9y ago
This is a serious reach. The item linked in the MOTD isn't an ad, it's a news story about a relatively high-profile project that turns out to have been built with Ubuntu. The story isn't written by Canonical; in fact, in the relatively long list of people thanked for their help at the end, Canonical isn't even included. It doesn't make a sales pitch, and only mentions the word "Ubuntu" one time. The only way to interpret it as "advertising" is if you believe literally anything that mentions Ubuntu is an ad, which would be stretching the meaning of the word far beyond the breaking point. If Canonical wants to use /etc/motd to spotlight interesting projects people are doing with Ubuntu, as a user of Ubuntu desktop & server I personally don't see a problem with that.
captainmuon 9y ago
But is it advertizing? I wonder if Canonical recieved money for this. I think it is just an interesting story that they linked to.
- bubblethink 9y ago
  That's not the only form of advertising. They are advertising themselves. More like marketing.
- dustinkirkland 9y ago
  I can officially confirm, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Canonical did not receive any money to post this story ;-)
joosters 9y ago
TL;DR : edit /etc/default/motd-news and change ENABLED to 0
- du_bing 9y ago
  That's crazy, how do you find that?
  - kyledrake 9y ago
    find /etc | grep motd
- dustinkirkland 9y ago
  That's right! You can also edit the URLS variable in that file, to point to more, or different sources of MOTD news.
bubblethink 9y ago
Off Topic. I find it funny that you would have a hard time watching "HBO's Silicon Valley" on an Ubuntu machine legally. HBO still uses flash based DRM.
- kurtisc 9y ago
  Can't Chrome's built-in Flash overcome that?
  - bubblethink 9y ago
    No, chrome's flash doesn't do DRM on regular linux distros. It does it only on ChromeOS.
- secretasiandan 9y ago
  You can watch HBO shows in amazon's player which works for chrome on ubuntu.
zzzcpan 9y ago
Ubuntu should advertise in updates. User is waiting for it to finish either way, connected to the internet and won't get annoyed.
yuhong 9y ago
I wonder how many use the terminal in the first place for such an ad to be actually profitable anyway.

82 points by 0x0 9y ago

Now this is either poor marketing or poor taste. They tried with desktop with Amazon applets now /etc/motd for server guys. This is really bad for ubuntu

krzrak 9y ago

Really disappointing.

sandstrom 9y ago

As long as security info etc. is present and prominent I don't mind if it's accompanied by entertaining tidbits.

gargravarr 9y ago
At the same time, it's considered poor practise to give servers open internet access. The only outgoing connections that should be allowed are to update servers. I'd second disabling this 'feature' on a server - it seems very unnecessary to get a MOTD from the internet in the first place, let alone if there's going to be advertising in it.
- dingaling 9y ago
  And updates are ideally pulled from a local cache so that only one server in the DMZ needs to connect to Ubuntu's server. It's disappointing that in 2017 no Linux vendor ships with a default-denial Internet firewall configuration but I suppose stories like this explain why.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    > It's disappointing that in 2017 no Linux vendor ships with a default-denial Internet firewall configuration but I suppose stories like this explain why. I don't believe that's accurate. On openSUSE and SLE you have SuSEFirewall2 which has such a configuration (from memory) and I would be surprised if RHEL doesn't have such a configuration.
dustinkirkland 9y ago
That's exactly right! Think of it, like Google's doodle that sometimes appears above the search bar. Interesting, fun facts, that likely have nothing to do with what you're Googling ;-)

justinclift 9y ago

Canonical, the Microsoft of Linux. ;) (for anyone wondering, that's a comment on ethics)

stephenr 9y ago

It still baffles me why people choose Ubuntu for a server. Canonical has a history of doing weird things: how many times have they diverged from upstream with some in-house solution that never quite works out. The 6 monthly releases aren't realistic for business, who use LTS, at which point you may as well use Debian and back ports/vendor repos for software you need more updated versions of.

matt4077 9y ago
I used to use Debian, and Gentoo before that. I still remember spending days trying to get a somewhat recent version of php to compile on these systems. Around the time I tried Ubuntu, I started encountering problems less and less. Maybe I got better, maybe all distributions got better, or maybe Ubuntu is more robust. I just don't feel any pain that would motivate me to try other distributions. Ubuntu also seems to be the de-facto standard, and anything with install instructions will first cover Ubuntu.
- gargravarr 9y ago
  Debian has the problem that its packages are older, so if you need specific versions of PHP or other runtimes, you are much better off using Ubuntu. It's worth noting that Debian can be made to support PPAs as well, but all this is native to Ubuntu. I can't deny the Ubuntu community is extensive and there are in-depth articles covering setup of just about anything on Ubuntu. Fortunately, owing to the Debian basis, it's fairly easy to convert the same tutorials to run on Debian.
  - philamonster 9y ago
    https://www.dotdeb.org/ https://www.dotdeb.org/ usually handles needs for more common late release packages in Debian.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    The main issue is trying to use the distro packages for dependencies of the things you'll actually use the server for. Over in the Python world I'd be perfectly happy to use Debian. I'd just use it only to provide an operating system; then I'd compile the version of Python I want, and use virtualenvs and pip for managing the actual application code and dependencies.

matt4077 9y ago

Good for them. Ubuntu does lots of good work that benefit the whole community, and if this allows them to stay in business, and pay people well to write open-source software, I'm not complaining. Considering the example shown (which I also get logging in) is about HBO's use of Tensorflow, this also happens to be the best-targeted ad I've seen in a while. At that level, advertising actually does become something that's valuable/interesting for the recipient. And if not, it takes about 10 seconds to disable.

revmoo 9y ago
It has to make unauthorized connections to pull down ads. No, this is not acceptable.
ckastner 9y ago
I don't think that the advertisement itself is the issue, but rather the medium chosen for it. Speaking for myself, I expect /etc/motd to contain information deemed relevant to me by the responsible sysadmin. I feel like this is the hi-jacking of a well-established communications channel, for ads no less.

throwanem 9y ago

Who leaves the default motd in place after an install?

revmoo 9y ago
Admins that don't have autism
mort96 9y ago
I do?
- thinkMOAR 9y ago
  Then you apparently don't work on PCI grade machines. Many particular industry security standards dictate you put a 'if you are not authorised disconnect now' message in the motd.
  - nsebban 9y ago
    I wish there was a way to know how many evil-doers cancelled their evil plans after reading that kind of MOTD.
    - detaro 9y ago
      AFAIK the theory is that it helps with prosecution - if they got this prompt they clearly were told where they are and that they are not welcome and can't try to excuse themselves through some mistake or not knowing that they shouldn't access.
    - bubblethink 9y ago
      Chip's defense from the Dave Chappelle bit where he says, "I didn't know I couldn't do that"
  - wichert 9y ago
    To be a bit pedantic: I would expect that kind of message to be put in /etc/issue so it is shown before login. /etc/motd is only shown after a successful login, which is a bit late for such a warning.

mr_overalls 9y ago

I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop for a while, working as a software dev. Maybe it's time to switch. What other distro is a competitor in this space? (I.e., not a minimalist distro, easy to use, with plenty of available software?) Fedora? Mint?

gargravarr 9y ago
Ubuntu as an end-user OS is fine, this discussion is specifically for servers. I personally use Mint though, purely for the Cinnamon GUI. Mint is basically Ubuntu underneath so there's no reason to switch.
Noctix 9y ago
Fedora, Debian (if you still want to use apt) or OpenSUSE.
romanovcode 9y ago
Arch
- sk1pper 9y ago
  I haven't used Arch in years, but I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a minimalist distro.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    But isn't that what OP was asking for?
wdfx 9y ago
I've been using Elementary OS for a year or so. Yes, it is based on Ubuntu, but I find the desktop env much nicer.

stinos 9y ago

Instead, https://motd.ubuntu.com https://motd.ubuntu.com should show relevant items to those that use Ubuntu Server (relevant security issues, etc), instead of items for desktop users. Shouldn't that be more like "Instead, Ubuntu should not fetch the motd from the internet by default, but have this feature as opt-in"?

wdfx 9y ago
Reading the bug report, this did lead me to wonder what happens when one tries to log in to an Ubuntu server which is behind a firewall and without internet access. Does this nonsense cause a timeout delay in getting into the box ?
- sebcat 9y ago
  https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg5191369.html https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/ms... "[Bug 1691901] [NEW] 50-motd-news costs 5 seconds every login on disconnected systems"
  - revmoo 9y ago
    Jesus Christ
- dustinkirkland 9y ago
  Howdy! I'm the author of the code in question, a bug in said code, and the fix to the bug in the code :-) By design: - Asynchronously, about 60 seconds after boot, a systemd timer fires which runs "/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force" - It sources 3 admin-editable config variables in /etc/default/motd-news. The defaults are: ENABLED=1, URLS="https://motd.ubuntu.com" https://motd.ubuntu.com", WAIT="5" - The admin can disable it entirely (ENABLED=0), change or add other MOTD news sources (your corporate IT team could run its own), and change the wait time in seconds - If it's enabled, that systemd timer job will loop over each of the URLS (note, that it's important that these should be https with valid SSL certificates), trim them to 80 characters per line, and a maximum of 10 lines, and concatenate them to a cache file in /var/cache/motd-news - Every ~12 hours thereafter (with a little bit of random timer fuzzing), this systemd timer job will re-run and update the /var/cache/motd-news - Upon login, the contents of /var/cache/motd-news is just printed to screen. There was a bug (fixed now, working its way through the Ubuntu update process), in that an empty cache file was not getting, if the fetch failed, so the fetch was retried every time (and failed every time, with the $WAIT delay of 5 seconds). Obviously, it was a simple fix. As I am generally responsible for this feature in Ubuntu (as the Ubuntu Product Manager for the design, and the Ubuntu Core Developer for the implementation) I'll also respond to the discussion about this feature being included in Ubuntu at all... - Back in 2009, Ubuntu was the first distribution to add the concept of a "dynamic MOTD", by introducing the /etc/update-motd.d/* structure of scripts. I originally implemented it for Landscape (a commercial package management system by Canonical), but it has since also been adopted by Debian, Amazon Linux, and others. - It's a flexible framework that enables distro packages or administrators to add executable scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/* to generate informative, interesting messages displayed at login. - This was quite interesting, in that for almost 40 years of Linux/UNIX, the "Message of the Day" was anything but that... It was a message that was created at one point in time, when the distro released, and that's about it. And we managed to change that. - If you look in your Ubuntu's /etc/update-motd.d/, you'll see a set of scripts. One prints the generic "welcome" banner. The next one prints 3 links, as to where to find help. You'll also find one that counts and displays the number of package updates available for the local system. Another tells you if a reboot is required. - All of these are locally generated, based on local information available on the system. - In Ubuntu 17.04, we added /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news. This is the script who's design is described above. The motivation is threefold: * Sometimes, there's critical information that either we, the distro, or perhaps even the local IT administrator of a fleet of systems needs to communicate to users at login. Think, "ShellShock", "Heartbleed", "StackClash". This seems to happen every few months, in the current state of the world. * Other times, we need to communicate something about the distribution. EoL messages, new feature availability, etc. * And sometimes, it's just a matter of presenting a fun fact. News from the world of Ubuntu. Or even your own IT department. Such was the case with the Silicon Valley / HBO message. It was just an interesting tidbit of potpourri from the world of Ubuntu. Last week's message actually announced an Ubuntu conference in Latin America. The week before, we linked to an article asking for feedback on Kubuntu. Before that, we announced the availability of Extended Security Maintenance updates for 12.04. And so on. - There is a team of engineering managers at Canonical (the ~ubuntu-motd team in Launchpad), all of who have shared write access to the source code repository (lp:ubuntu-motd in Launchpad). Going forward, we're going to review one another's proposed message merges. In fact, that's an open source repository. You're welcome to propose your own messages for merging, if you have a well formatted, informative message for Ubuntu users. We'll be happy to review and include them in the future. As always, I'm impressed with the critical analysis of the HackerNews community. We, the Ubuntu ecosystem, are held by the HN community to a very high standard, and we're quite humbled by that. Thank you for the continued feedback and response. Cheers, Dustin

smacktoward 9y ago

This is a serious reach. The item linked in the MOTD isn't an ad, it's a news story about a relatively high-profile project that turns out to have been built with Ubuntu. The story isn't written by Canonical; in fact, in the relatively long list of people thanked for their help at the end, Canonical isn't even included. It doesn't make a sales pitch, and only mentions the word "Ubuntu" one time. The only way to interpret it as "advertising" is if you believe literally anything that mentions Ubuntu is an ad, which would be stretching the meaning of the word far beyond the breaking point. If Canonical wants to use /etc/motd to spotlight interesting projects people are doing with Ubuntu, as a user of Ubuntu desktop & server I personally don't see a problem with that.

captainmuon 9y ago

But is it advertizing? I wonder if Canonical recieved money for this. I think it is just an interesting story that they linked to.

bubblethink 9y ago
That's not the only form of advertising. They are advertising themselves. More like marketing.
dustinkirkland 9y ago
I can officially confirm, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Canonical did not receive any money to post this story ;-)

joosters 9y ago

TL;DR : edit /etc/default/motd-news and change ENABLED to 0

du_bing 9y ago
That's crazy, how do you find that?
- kyledrake 9y ago
  find /etc | grep motd
dustinkirkland 9y ago
That's right! You can also edit the URLS variable in that file, to point to more, or different sources of MOTD news.

bubblethink 9y ago

Off Topic. I find it funny that you would have a hard time watching "HBO's Silicon Valley" on an Ubuntu machine legally. HBO still uses flash based DRM.

kurtisc 9y ago
Can't Chrome's built-in Flash overcome that?
- bubblethink 9y ago
  No, chrome's flash doesn't do DRM on regular linux distros. It does it only on ChromeOS.
secretasiandan 9y ago
You can watch HBO shows in amazon's player which works for chrome on ubuntu.

zzzcpan 9y ago

Ubuntu should advertise in updates. User is waiting for it to finish either way, connected to the internet and won't get annoyed.

yuhong 9y ago

I wonder how many use the terminal in the first place for such an ad to be actually profitable anyway.