FireMotD is end of life

[rkoshak]

Issue information:

FireMotD is end of life and has been for some time. From https://github.com/OutsideIT/FireMotD

The original maintainer of FireMotD is stepping down. As of 2024-01-01, this project is no longer maintained by the original author. The OutsideIT GitHub project will be closed. The community is encouraged to fork, modify, and maintain their own versions of FireMotD if wanted.

Assuming we don't want to take on ongoing maintainence of this project ourselves, I recommend switching to another service. I've been using FastFetch: https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch for some months now and can recommend it.

If agreed that this is the way to go, I can try to whip together a PR to switch to this over the next week or so.

It's super configurable but my current config for FastFetch appears as:

Obviously we'd use an openHAB logo instad of an OS logo.

[ecdye]

I like this idea, I've been dissatisfied with FireMotD for some time, but haven't had time to really find a suitable replacement. I think this is a great alternative, especially if we can throw together an openHAB logo for it too.

[mstormi]

especially if we can throw together an openHAB logo for it too.

@kaikreuzer do you happen to have an ASCII logo available?

[rkoshak]

FastFetch does support png logos too but I need to try that out top make sure it renders well in most common terminal emulators. An ASCII logo would be more universally supported.

[kaikreuzer]

@mstormi What would be the requirements for the logo? What we have is the one that is used in the openHAB console:
https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/blob/main/distributions/openhab/src/main/filtered-resources/userdata/etc/branding.properties

[rkoshak]

I'm still experimenting but that one will probably work, minus the karaf console stuff at the bottom.

I'm currently experimenting to find the right balance between speed and information shown. Obviously waiting around to pull the weather doesn't need to be in there.

An alternative would be something like the round Ubuntu logo you see above but I've not seen something like that in ASCII before for OH, but one could probably be created without much effort. If it's not too hard and I don't fall too far behind maybe I can show both and we can choose.

I going to forge ahead on this but it'll be slow going due to other commitments. I have ansible scripts which I need to translate to bash and I need to free up an RPi for testing.

[matmai]

I have created an icon, hopefully it is the right size:

          ############          
      ####################      
    ######            ######    
   ####                  ####   
 #####         **         ##### 
#####         ****          ####
####        ********        ####
###       *****  *****       ###
###     *****      *****     ###
###   *****          *****   ###
### *****              **** ####
  *****                  ** ####
 *****                    ##### 
   *###                  ####%  
    ######            ######    
      ####################      
         ##############         

Fell free to use it.

[mstormi]

FWIW I removed the platform output from FireMotD in #2067

Anyone willing to build a PR for fastfetch?

[rkoshak]

Anyone willing to build a PR for fastfetch?

My understanding is that FastFetch is part of the repos for Trixie. My plan was to wait and see if it makes it to the Raspberry Pi repos too and if so we can just use apt-get to install it instead of pulling a dpkg or building from scratch.

Then it's just a matter of creating the config and adding that to the .bashrc (or where ever, I use fish so I'll need to check to see which file is most appropriate).

But if we don't want to wait I can assist with a PR but don't want to sign up for one right now. I've too much on my plate and will surely fail to deliver.

[mstormi]

no need to hurry, let's wait for the trixie release

[MarkusThur]

Linux BTCNode 6.12.75+rpt-rpi-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.75-1+rpt1 (2026-03-11) aarch64
Last login: Fri Mar 20 12:22:37 2026 from 192.168.178.97
                               user@XXXX
                               ------------------
        _,met$$$$$gg.          Model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5
     ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) 13.4 aarch64
   ,g$$P""       """Y$$.".     Kernel: Linux 6.12.75+rpt-rpi-v8
  ,$$P'              `$$$.     Uptime: 3 days, 21 hours, 49 mins
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:    Loadavg: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$     Processes: 126
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P     Packages: 679 (dpkg)
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'     Shell: bash 5.2.37
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'       Terminal: /dev/pts/0  ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'          Terminal Size: 107 columns x 24 rows (1105px x 425px)
 `$$b      "-.__               CPU: BCM2711 (4) @ 1.80 GHz
  `Y$$b                        temperature: 43.8°C
   `Y$$.                       CPU Usage: 0%
     `$$b.                     RAM: 194.44 MiB / 3.75 GiB (5%)
       `Y$$b.                  Swap: 0 B / 2.00 GiB (0%)
         `"Y$b._               Disk (/): 4.32 GiB / 57.48 GiB (8%) - ext4
             `""""             Disk (/opt/zram/zram1): 384.00 KiB / 487.21 MiB (0%) - ext4
                               WAN IP: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (some City, DE)
                               LAN IP: 192.168.178.234/24 <some IPv6>
                               MAC: 88:a2:9e:be:0e:81
                               Link speed: 1 Gbps
                               DNS (v4): 192.168.178.xxx 8.8.8.8
                               Gateway: 192.168.178.xxx --
                               Locale: de_DE.UTF-8
                               Date & Time: 2026-03-21 19:30:31
                               OpenGL: 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.0.7-2+rpt4
                               Network IO (eth0): 1.91 KiB/s (IN) - 4.99 KiB/s (OUT)
                               Disk IO (mmcblk0): 0 B/s (R) - 0 B/s (W)
                               Physical Disk (mmcblk0): 58.94 GiB [SSD, Fixed]
                               Version: fastfetch 2.40.4-debug (aarch64)
user@XXXX:~ $ sudo apt list --installed | grep fast

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

fastfetch/stable,now 2.40.4+dfsg-1 arm64  [installiert]
markusthur@XXXX:~ $

So I have a Pi4 running rasberry PI OS Trixie, and yes fastfetch has a package as we can see....
If you like I can add the .jsonc that produces this.. :-)

[rkoshak]

I'm just back from a trip and finally have a little bit of time to look at it but if you want to submit a PR you'll probably get it done faster than I will.

I think the goal is to use the openHAB logo instead of the debian or raspberry pi logo which fastfetch supports out-of-the-box. My personal goal was to colorize the ascii logo posted above to use. The github page for fastfetch describes how to do that. I think it would be nice.

I think that set of output you show is probably a little overkill and might confuse some of the users. I'd remove: processes, packages, shell, terminal, terminal size, link speed, locale, opengl, and version at a minimum. These are things that don't change or do not really provide actionalbe information to the end user. And since openHABian is intended to be headless, openGL probably isn't even installed. I think the goal should be to not have too many more lines of stats than the logo.

The changes required are to install fastfetch via apt, copying the logo file and config file to username/.config/fastfetch once the user is created, and backing out all the firemotd stuff.