Am I hallucinating or did my last update wipe out my custom Message Of The day? Has anyone else experienced this recently?
If it did, I hope it backed up the current version. If not that's very unfortunate - I'm forced to have to recreate it.
I had it set up as a reminder / cheat sheet of things I have set in my node...
If you're running an ASL3 Appliance Image and/or using the asl3-appliance package, then yes the MOTD will be recreated on a package update.
Yeah, I'm running a SHARI node.
It seems kind of careless to have a software update destroy data (w/o backup) Cockpit gives you an editor to change the MOTD to your hearts content (it's not a fixed width font 
) but it got deleted...
(Last update on/before Aug 21, 2026:
I like having a custom MOTD, give me reminders and hints and tips - for instance: Reminder to use rpi-clone. Which actually saved my bacon in this case because I was able to go to the backup drive and navigate to my latest custom MOTD there and restore it back.
Anyway, onward and upward.
Tim - KD6HOF
The asl3-appliance package is "opinionated" (as documented) in that it will reset various configuration back to expected items. That's both the value and drawbacks of an appliance package.
If you mark /etc/motd as immutable, it won't get overwritten - i.e. chattr +i /etc/motd.