Login messages

A login message is a message that OpenVMS displays at login time: the announcement message, the welcome message, and the last login message.

Example

Here is an example of the login messages:

 Welcome to OpenVMS (TM) Alpha Operating System, Version V8.4-2L2    !announcement message

Username: 
Password:

   Welcome to OpenVMS (TM) Alpha Operating System, Version V8.4-2L2  !welcome message
    Last interactive login on Friday, 18-JAN-2019 16:27:13.14        !last login message
 

Announcement message

The announcement message appears before the username prompt, which means it will be seen by everyone who tries to log in to your system. It should not provide any private information and should preferably be used as a message to potential intruders. To provide or change the announcement message, redefine SYS$ANNOUNCE in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM to a string or a file containing the text to be displayed (in that case, precede the file name with an @). The logical name must be defined in the system logical name table in executive mode.

Welcome message

The welcome message appears after the user has logged in. It is controlled by the SYS$WELCOME logical name. Define SYS$WELCOME like you would SYS$ANNOUNCE (see above). If you do not define SYS$WELCOME, a standard welcome message is provided, which includes the operating system, the version number, and the node if SYS$NODE is defined. You can also disable welcome messages for certain user records by setting the DISWELCOME flag.

Last login message

After the welcome message, the date and time of the last interactive and non-interactive login and the number of failed login attempts are displayed. You can suppress the appearance of these messages for specific users by adding the DISREPORT flag to their UAF records. However, this is not recommended as last login messages help the users detect break-ins.