Linux – How to prevent system information from being displayed on a terminal

consolekernellinuxlogsterminal

I'm working on a curses GUI that is supposed to start up automatically on boot-up in the default linux terminal (I have no X server installed). I have this working great, but I have a problem where shortly after my curses application starts, the OS will dump some information to the terminal, which messes up my GUI. Something about "read-ahead cache" pops up every time. I have also seen messages displayed when I insert a USB flash drive or some other device.

Is there a way to prevent these messages from being sent to /dev/tty1?

Best Answer

You can use the command dmesg -n1 to prevent all messages, except panic messages, from appearing on the console.

To make this change permanent, modify your /etc/sysctl.conf file to include the following setting (the first 3 is the important part).

kernel.printk = 3 4 1 3

See this post for information on the kernel.printk values.

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Ubuntu – How to remove/change the message displayed when opening a terminal

The static-text part displayed before prompt is found in /etc/motd. Motd stands for Message Of The Day (see man motd).

Other than this, your startup (profile) file can execute something like the fortune program (which seems to be your case). To get rid of or modify it, if you use bash, edit the .bashrc or .bash_profile and find where fortune is executed. See man fortune for details.

It can also be that the text is just constructed directly in .bashrc, .bash_profile or somewhere like that.

Journalctl – Prevent Text Truncation in Terminal

From the journalctl manpage:

   The output is paged through less by default, and long lines are
   "truncated" to screen width. The hidden part can be viewed by using the
   left-arrow and right-arrow keys. Paging can be disabled; see the
   --no-pager option and the "Environment" section below.

If you don't want to constantly be using the left and right arrow keys, simply pipe it directly to less:

$ journalctl -xn | less

This will wrap lines that are too long for your terminal (the default behavior of less, which journalctl overrides).

Or, of course, if you don't mind possibly having to use your terminal's scrollback, you could use no pager at all:

$ journalctl -xn --no-pager

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – How to remove/change the message displayed when opening a terminal

Journalctl – Prevent Text Truncation in Terminal

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