I've just made the transition to Ubuntu Linux 12.10 and I want to properly set up my first motd. I've run the following below and noticed that I only have one motd file instead of having a secondary file called motd.tail that most Ubuntu versions seem to have. Should I create backup copy the motd file and then write to that file, or write to the file directly? Also, once I've written to this file do I need to make it executable to display the message?
ls -l motd* // output: motd -> /var/run/motd