So what you're saying is that it would be possible to 
write a daemon that could read a random spot in the 
fortune database at random intervals and stick it in 
/etc/motd? And no one has done this yet? Of
course it would mean no one could personalize it as it
would be system-wide. Thanks for removing my ignorance on
the subject.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Bier
> 
> MOTD is Message of the day.  It displays a message that is 
> displayed on
> login to give any info the admin wants to convey to all users without
> sending an email to all.  AFAIK, /etc/motd is just a file and there is
> no daemon.
> 
> Fortune reads fortune files with quotes and displays a random entry.
> It's just a program and has nothing to do with logins.  It 
> can, however
> be added to .bash_profile, .profile, etc to display a random 
> quote for a
> user's login.
>