Manage and display system news using a simple but effective utility.

Software installation

Install sysnews utility.

$ sudo apt-get install sysnews

Basic information

System news uses plain text files located in /var/lib/sysnews directory. This directory belongs to the user root and group staff and has an SGID bit set.

File modification time is used as the message date.

The application uses modification time of ~/.news_time to distinguish between old and new system news. It updates this file on every run.

Create system news

Create system news as the root user

As root user you can simply create a new file.

$ echo "Hello, this is an initial message" | sudo tee /var/lib/sysnews/initial_message

Create system news as a regular user

The user needs to belong to the staff group.

$ sudo usermod -a -G staff milosz

Create system news in /var/lib/sysnews/ directory.

milosz$ echo "Hello, this is a message from milosz" | tee /var/lib/sysnews/milosz_initial_message

User can create, edit, remove its own system news as SGID bit is set on a directory.

$ stat  /var/lib/sysnews
  File: /var/lib/sysnews
  Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 801h/2049d      Inode: 136046      Links: 2
Access: (2775/drwxrwsr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (   50/   staff)
Access: 2019-09-03 21:39:34.246965900 +0000
Modify: 2019-09-03 21:39:04.658852430 +0000
Change: 2019-09-03 21:39:04.658852430 +0000
 Birth: -

$ ls -l /var/lib/sysnews/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   staff 34 Sep  3 21:28 initial_message
-rw-r--r-- 1 milosz staff 37 Sep  3 21:39 milosz_initial_message

User notification

Create /etc/profile.d/news.sh shell script that will display system news.

#!/bin/bash
echo "System news"
echo "-----------"
news

Ensure that the executable bit is set.

$ sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/news.sh

Verify that it works as expected.

$ sudo su - milosz
System news
-----------
** initial_message (root)  Tue Sep  3 21:28:23 2019
Hello, this is an initial message
** milosz_initial_message (milosz)  Tue Sep  3 21:39:05 2019
Hello, this is a message from milosz

The application will update the ~/.news_time file, so it will mark any older system news as already read.

$ ls -l ~/.news_time
-rw------- 1 milosz milosz 0 Sep  3 21:51 /home/milosz/.news_time

Purge old system news

By default, the application will use cron to delete anything older than 30 days, except WELCOME, POLICY and NEWUSERS files.

$ cat /etc/cron.daily/sysnews
#!/bin/sh -e
# CRON script to purge files in /var/lib/sysnews after 30 days.
# Exclude files named WELCOME/POLICY/NEWUSERS, since they are intended to
# stay for new users.  The files POLICY/NEWUSERS are not supplied by the
# Debian package because they are site-specific.
if [ -x /usr/bin/news ]; then
        news -e 30 -x WELCOME,POLICY,NEWUSERS
fi

You can create /var/lib/systemnews/.noexpire file to extend the list of excluded files using a comma-separated list and/or newlines.

$ echo -e "initial_message,message\nmilosz_initial_message" | sudo tee /var/lib/sysnews/.noexpire 
initial_message,message
milosz_initial_message

Additional options

Display the number of system news.

$ news --articles --all
NEWS: 2 news articles

Display the number of unread system news.

$ news --articles
NEWS: 1 news article

Display the names of system news.

$ news --all --names
NEWS: initial_message milosz_initial_message

Display names of unread system news.

$ news  --names
NEWS: milosz_initial_message

Display system news.

$ news --all
** initial_message (root)  Tue Sep  3 21:57:40 2019
Hello, this is an initial message
** milosz_initial_message (milosz)  Tue Sep  3 21:59:42 2019
Hello, this is a message from milosz

Display unread system news.

$ news
** milosz_initial_message (milosz)  Tue Sep  3 22:08:27 2019
Hello, this is a message from milosz