Comment 12 for bug 1888575

For the focal verification, I added a secondary test (j2) like I did for bionic, and that is a release upgrade from an updated focal non-server system to groovy, using the base-files package from focal-proposed, thus simulating the release upgrade once this SRU is complete.

Result is correct as well. Details below.

j2) do-release-upgrade from focal to groovy with the focal-proposed base-files package installed, no ubuntu-server installed, and thus motd-news-config disabled:
Starting point:
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ dpkg -l base-files ubuntu-server motd-news-config | grep ^ii
dpkg-query: no packages found matching motd-news-config
ii base-files 11ubuntu5.2 amd64 Debian base system miscellaneous files
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ sudo /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ echo $?
0
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ apt-cache policy base-files
base-files:
  Installed: 11ubuntu5.2
  Candidate: 11ubuntu5.2
  Version table:
 *** 11ubuntu5.2 500
        500 http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-proposed/main amd64 Packages
(...)

Just before running do-release-upgrade, I removed focal-proposed from sources.list, to avoid upgrading other packages, not related to this test.

Final state:
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ dpkg -l base-files ubuntu-server motd-news-config | grep ^ii
dpkg-query: no packages found matching motd-news-config
ii base-files 11ubuntu12 amd64 Debian base system miscellaneous files
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ apt-cache policy base-files
base-files:
  Installed: 11ubuntu12
  Candidate: 11ubuntu12
  Version table:
 *** 11ubuntu12 500
        500 http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy/main amd64 Packages

motd-new disabled as expected:
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ sudo /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force
ubuntu@focal-motd-news-split:~$ echo $?
0