double welcome banner in ubuntu server

[Pablo Piaggio]

I check for updates every day. After I applied the available updates last night, all connections via ssh are being welcomed by the same message displayed twice (the welcoming banner).

>Welcome to Ubuntu!
> * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
>...

This is happening in both of the server I admin: my home server and my brother's.

More info:

$ uname -a
Linux reinhardt 2.6.32-21-generic-pae #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 09:39:35 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

Regards.

[Robert Hardy (rhardy)]

I started seeing this too around April 18th @ 11:08 on all my 10.04 Ubuntu servers.

I eventually found a static copy of my motd, which was never getting updated in /etc/motd.tail.

I have no idea what put that there, but given it happened on all my servers it must have been a package update and yet looking at the dates in /var/lib/dpkg/info none of the packages which touch /etc/update-motd.d/* have changed recently. Some of the servers only I have access to, so this is very odd...

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Its initscripts.

bdmurray@bizarro:~$ sudo apt-get install initscripts
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  initscripts
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 60 not upgraded.
Need to get 74.6kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main initscripts 2.87dsf-4ubuntu17.1 [74.6kB]
Fetched 74.6kB in 0s (79.0kB/s)
(Reading database ... 73407 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace initscripts 2.87dsf-4ubuntu17 (using .../initscripts_2.87dsf-4ubuntu17.1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement initscripts ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up initscripts (2.87dsf-4ubuntu17.1) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/umountroot ...

bdmurray@bizarro:~$ logout
Connection to 192.168.10.1 closed.
22:05:33 - flash:[/tmp] ssh bizarro
Linux bizarro 2.6.32-28-server #55-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 10 23:57:16 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Server!
 * Documentation: http://www.ubuntu.com/server/doc

Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Server!
 * Documentation: http://www.ubuntu.com/server/doc

You have mail.
Last login: Thu Apr 21 22:06:48 2011 from flash

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

It looks to me like /etc/motd.tail has the same information as /etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text.

[Pablo Piaggio (papibe)]

Today's updates solved this problem. Finally the double banner is gone.

Thanks to all.