/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news not executable

[Helio Loureiro]

On new installed 18.04, just caught a failed process to start: motd-news

root@xps13 ~# systemctl list-units --state=failed
  UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
● motd-news.service loaded failed failed Message of the Day

Looking close:

root@xps13 ~# systemctl status motd-news
● motd-news.service - Message of the Day
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/motd-news.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2020-06-30 09:16:54 CEST; 5h 6min ago
     Docs: man:update-motd(8)
  Process: 12505 ExecStart=/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)
 Main PID: 12505 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)

Jun 30 09:16:54 elxa7r5lmh2 systemd[1]: Starting Message of the Day...
Jun 30 09:16:54 elxa7r5lmh2 systemd[1]: motd-news.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC
Jun 30 09:16:54 elxa7r5lmh2 systemd[1]: motd-news.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 30 09:16:54 elxa7r5lmh2 systemd[1]: Failed to start Message of the Day.

I could fix by a simple "chmod +x" to the file.

root@xps13 ~# /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news
fish: The file “/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news” is not executable by this user
root@xps13 ~# chmod 755 /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news
root@xps13 ~# /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news

So there are 2 bugs here:
1) missing executable permission on file
2) executable placement inside /etc directory

Extra info:
1) Description: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Release: 18.04
2) base-files:
  Installed: 10.1ubuntu2.8
  Candidate: 10.1ubuntu2.8
  Version table:
 *** 10.1ubuntu2.8 500
        500 mirror://elx-install.lmera.ericsson.se/mirrors.txt bionic-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     10.1ubuntu2.2 500
        500 mirror://elx-install.lmera.ericsson.se/mirrors.txt bionic-security/main amd64 Packages
     10.1ubuntu2 500
        500 mirror://elx-install.lmera.ericsson.se/mirrors.txt bionic/main amd64 Packages
3) Not to crash would be much better
4) Crashed