Reduce cron spam from weekly update-notifier-common

[Haw Loeung]

Hi,

We get these cron spam weekly:

| Received: by mysystem.mydomain.local (Postfix)
| id B19E32E806B; Sun, 15 Aug 2021 06:47:03 +0000 (UTC)
| Delivered-To: <email address hidden>
| Received: by mysystem.mydomain.local (Postfix, from userid 0)
| id 9DD002E8075; Sun, 15 Aug 2021 06:47:03 +0000 (UTC)
| From: Cron Daemon <email address hidden>
| To: <email address hidden>
| Subject: Cron <root@mysystem> test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
| MIME-Version: 1.0
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
| Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
| X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
| X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin>
| X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/root>
| X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
| Message-Id: <email address hidden>
| Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2021 06:47:03 +0000 (UTC)
|
| /etc/cron.weekly/update-notifier-common:
| New release '18.04.5 LTS' available.
| Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

This is output from /etc/cron.weekly/update-notifier-common calling /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/release-upgrade-motd

That's fine for when you have a system or two, but probably not when you manage many. Any chance the cron job can be updated so stdout is silenced? So:

| # Check to see whether there is a new version of Ubuntu available
| /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/release-upgrade-motd > /dev/null

Thanks

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I think part of the point of having the cronjob is to mail the system administrator and let them know that a new release of Ubuntu is available. That being said I do feel like sending the email every week until the system upgraded is a bit much. I'd be happy to hear about any clever ideas for avoiding that.

[Haw Loeung (hloeung)]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 05:39:23PM -0000, Brian Murray wrote:
> I think part of the point of having the cronjob is to mail the system
> administrator and let them know that a new release of Ubuntu is
> available. That being said I do feel like sending the email every week
> until the system upgraded is a bit much. I'd be happy to hear about any
> clever ideas for avoiding that.

Maybe email once per new release of Ubuntu (including point
releases). Create a flag on disk when notifed for said release.

If we wanted to, create the flag on /run, so that a reboot resets it
all.

Unfortunately, this is made worse with the shift to replacing services
with juju deployments where environments contain multiple units each
trying to email about a new release.

Thanks!

[Dave Jones (waveform)]

One method that wouldn't require fs storage would be to only notify for a certain number of days post-release (as limited by something like ubuntu-distro-info --stable --days=release > -30) which would (on the currently weekly schedule) limit a release to sending 4-5 emails?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Utkarsh Gupta (utkarsh)]

Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that specific release.