I access my Pi remotely using SSH. While trying out the zsh shell as an alternative to bash, I wondered if I could get rid of all the bumf that’s displayed as soon as I’ve logged in. I want to see the command line prompt and not much else. A little research led me to the following.

The text you see when you log into a Raspberry Pi remotely is generated by from a combination of static files and scripts.

The first line provides Linux information; it’s the output of the uname command, which in this case is called by the script /etc/update-motd.d/10-uname.

The Debian copyright and warranty text is static. You’ll find it in the file /etc/motd.

Edit each of these files, using sudo, and save them when you’re done. For the script, just comment out the line uname -snrvm — just prefix the line with #. For the static file, just delete the contents, or replace it with a message of your own.

Finally, the Last Login:... line. I decided to keep this, but you can get rid of it by creating the file .hushlogin in your home directory: cd $HOME && touch .hushlogin.

Now log out (exit) and when you log back in, you’ll just go straight to the prompt.

Note This all works in Raspbian Buster; older Pi operating systems might do it differently.