the corner office : tech blog

Getting rid of all the login startup gumpf in recent versions of Ubuntu server: (see eg. Ubuntu forums Server 10.04: How to Eradicate the MOTD System?)

sudo apt-get purge landscape-common landscape-client
sudo chmod -x /etc/update-motd.d/*

You can probably delete 'em just as easily. Put something friendly in /etc/motd to compensate.

(As a reminder, the other slow login culprit can often be if the server can't resolve the client's hostname, usually fixed on local machines or VMs by adding an entry to /etc/hosts.)