42

I wish to display a cowsay message in every terminal window. The command I use is

 fortune | cowsay

Any ideas how to make it appear whenever I start a new terminal session?

Mechanical snail
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theTuxRacer
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6 Answers6

51

  • Open the file ~/.bashrc (or /etc/bash.bashrc if it should work globally for all users).

  • Add the following at the bottom of the file:

    if [ -x /usr/games/cowsay -a -x /usr/games/fortune ]; then
    fortune | cowsay
fi
htorque
  • 66,086
8

BONUS: If you're using bash you can make a ~/.bash_logout file and it will execute that when you log out. Make sure to have it sleep for a second or so, or you'll never see it.

cowsay "See you later"; sleep 1

Joey1978
  • 81
7

I would consider setting a limit to the size of the fortune command requested.

fortune -s | cowsay

This will produce at most 160 characters. This is a good size for a greeting, anything more than that and long fortunes will flood your terminal.

poulter7
  • 223
4

I use

fortune | cowsay -f `ls -1 /usr/share/cowsay/cows/ | sort -R | head -1` -n

This will display a random fortune using a random 'cow'. There's probably a better way to get a random 'cow', but this works for me just fine.

user418681
  • 41
2

Better you use .bash_profile because .bashrc is also executed at commands like scp and they will fail silently if there is any output

I found a nice script on pastebin. currently using it.

http://pastebin.com/f0QXTPbt

Schwertspize
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  • 1
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0

I am using

cowsay Welcome to Bash Shell in .bashrc.

This will be prompt every time when you open the terminal.

Linuxian
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