removal (not purge) breaks MOTD

[Dimitris Kogias]

Starting a few days ago, all of my 10.04.4 servers ceased printing the MOTD when I SSH'd into them. /etc/motd is a symlink to /var/run/motd which doesn't exist. /var/run/motd.new is being created correctly on each login, e.g.:

Linux <hostname> 2.6.32-39-generic-pae #86-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 13 23:05:11 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS

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

  System information as of Wed Mar 7 10:11:33 PST 2012

  System load: 0.08 Processes: 109
  Usage of /: 45.4% of 362.86GB Users logged in: 0
  Memory usage: 10% IP address for eth0: <addr>
  Swap usage: 0% IP address for vboxnet0: <addr>

  Graph this data and manage this system at https://landscape.canonical.com/

0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: libpam-modules 1.1.1-2ubuntu5.4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-39.86-generic-pae 2.6.32.56+drm33.22
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-39-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Mar 7 10:06:23 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100816.2)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: pam

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

That /var/run/motd.new has been created does not mean that it has been created correctly. Please show the output of the following command run as root:

/usr/bin/env -i PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin run-parts --lsbsysinit /etc/update-motd.d > /var/run/motd.new; echo $?

It is likely that one or more of the update-motd scripts is failing on your system, in which case /var/run/motd will not be updated.

[Dimitris Kogias (dimitris-k)]

I "fixed" this before seeing comment #2:

run-parts was returning an error code (2 IIRC) because I had removed, but not purged, update-manager-core from these systems a few days ago.

That resulted in /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade being left behind, which would attempt to run /usr/lib/update-manager/release-upgrade-motd which no longer existed.

After purging update-manager-core, /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade was also removed, run-parts now completes successfully and the MOTD is displayed correctly.

[Dimitris Kogias (dimitris-k)]

Root cause is update-manager-core removal does not clear no-longer-functional /etc/update-motd.d script, breaking MOTD. Requires purge.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

ok. definitely an update-manager bug, then - though update-manager-core is priority: standard, so isn't normally something we would expect users to remove. Marking as low priority.