/etc/issue

[Guy Harris]

>In section 4 of every Sys V manual I have seen there is a very short manual
>page about the file "/etc/issue" and how it is printed as a login message by
>getty.

...

>The trouble is it doesn't work as advertised, and there's no docs for the 
>mysterious "lines" file.

The manual is only an approximation of reality (sort of like the output
of "ps" :-)), and isn't always maintained perfectly.  This problem isn't
unique to AT&T; other suppliers (commercial or, ahem, academic) of UNIX
systems tend to have the same problem.

The problem is that in S5R3, at least, the code to print "/etc/issue" is
within an #ifdef, and the #ifdef isn't turned on by default. 
Nevertheless, the man page is still there in the S5R3 documentation.

I suspect this feature dates back to an old internal-to-AT&T version of
UNIX; the "issue or project identification" stuff is probably some
internal-to-AT&T notion.  The "lines" file may have been the moral
equivalent of "/etc/ttys" or "/etc/inittab" in that version.

It might actually be a useful feature for some sites, so perhaps it
should be turned on by default; after all, it costs you little if you
*don't* want a pre-login-prompt banner - just don't have an "/etc/issue"
file.  The documentation should, of course, be brought up to date, with
no reference to the "lines" file, and no mention of an "issue or project
identification".