i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Working on it, following this guide, arghh.

...

Ok, got it ... sort of.  The cpio command is wrong because if you output message to the directory you are in, it will recurse and put the "message" file you are building into the message archive itself.  So, I made a temp subdirectory and ran the cpio output to > /temp/message.

My version is below and you can try it.  (BTW, this preserves the holiday animated penguin as well).  The photo is one we took at a restaurant on Postrasse in Berlin in the Nikolaiviertel.

Now onto trying to solve a much more important problem ... why aren't suspend and hibernate working on this system???  It's got something to do with either software I haved added or omitted, since it works from the Live USB version of OpSu 12.1 KDE, but not from my actual install.  I've got pm-utils and suspend packages.  It creates the images and pretends to return and then ... black screen/nothing.  Apparently an issue with the ATI proprietary fglrx drivers.   Maybe.  It's hard to find the correct info that is distro and ver. specific.