The telnet banner is set in /etc/gettytab by using the "im" (initial message) capability. All IPSO terminals use the default entry, which looks like this: default:\ :cb:ce:ck:lc:fd#1000:im=\r\n IPSO (%h) (%t)\r\n\r\n:sp#1200: This produces the following initial banner. --------------- IPSO (hostname) (ttyp0) login: --------------- You may change this by editing /etc/gettytab. To do so, first remount the hard disk read-write (# mount -uw /) and edit gettytab. If you wished for the initial banner to say something else, you could edit the im capability, such as in the following example: default:\ :cb:ce:ck:lc:fd#1000:im=\r\n Unauthorized access prohibited\r\n\r\n:sp#1200: