Per https://wiki.debian.org/motd, the following commands are done at boot time:
$ uname -snrvm > /var/run/motd $ [ -f /etc/motd.tail ] && cat /etc/motd.tail >> /var/run/motd
We so need to ask Salt to run the following when /etc/motd.tail is updated in roles/core/motd:
uname -snrvm > /var/run/motd cat /etc/motd.tail >> /var/run/motd