Comment 6 for bug 805423

I'm on 10.04.4 (latest kernel, everything) and I just spent an entire work-day debugging pam_motd behavior.

For some reason, one of the scripts fails (defuncts) when I try to log into a server. Add to that, this server is on EC2 so there is no way to use the terminal either.

Anyhow – for a sumary I've posted everything here: http://askubuntu.com/a/162373/11244

The solution was to disable pam_motd in these files:

 /etc/pam.d/sshd
 /etc/pam.d/login

The lack of debugging facilities in here are one of the reasons why this should be removed period. I don't really care if some people don't get a pretty MOTD then.

The larger issue here is the potential block of a log in process, which makes it "severe". There seems to be no way to figure out what exactly is wrong because you are literally logged out of the instance which is IMHO unacceptable behavior for an LTS.

There should be at least a timeout which will eventually make the scripts fail if they cannot complete.