[Bug 1829968] Re: motd [on at least some instances] does not auto-update daily

[Brian Murray]

I've verified this for Ubuntu 19.04 (disco) and it is good.

bdmurray at clean-disco-amd64:~$ systemctl list-timers motd* --all
NEXT                         LEFT     LAST                         PASSED       UNIT            ACTIVATES
Wed 2019-07-17 03:06:29 PDT  11h left Tue 2019-07-16 15:43:04 PDT  2min 44s ago motd-news.timer motd-news.service

1 timers listed.
bdmurray at clean-disco-amd64:~$ systemctl list-timers motd* --all
NEXT                         LEFT    LAST                         PASSED       UNIT            ACTIVATES
Wed 2019-07-17 16:23:31 PDT  8h left Wed 2019-07-17 03:07:01 PDT  4h 36min ago motd-news.timer motd-news.service

1 timers listed.
bdmurray at clean-disco-amd64:~$ ls -lh /var/cache/motd-news 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 169 Jul 17 03:07 /var/cache/motd-news
bdmurray at clean-disco-amd64:~$ apt-cache policy base-files
base-files:
  Installed: 10.1ubuntu9.1

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to base-files in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1829968

Title:
  motd [on at least some instances] does not auto-update daily

Status in base-files package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in base-files source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in base-files source package in Cosmic:
  Fix Committed
Status in base-files source package in Disco:
  Fix Committed
Status in base-files source package in Eoan:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  motd-news timer is not properly configured and may not run regularly so long running systems will not get an updated motd

  [Test Case]
  The motd-news.timer is known to be incorrectly configured because motd-news.services is a one shot service which will not become active. Subsequently, have a timer with OnUnitActiveSec is wrong and the timer will not work reliably. However, because it can work some of the time it is difficult to find a case where the timer always fails so test case will involve only confirming that the new timer is correct.

  1) On a system with curl installed, install the new version of base-files
  2) Run 'systemctl list-timers motd* --all
  3) Confirm that "LEFT" is less than 12 hours (Its less than 24 hours because we don't want people to miss important messages)
  4) Wait until "NEXT" is reached
  5) Confirm that there is another "NEXT" and that the time stamp of /var/cache/motd-news was updated

  [Regression Potential]
  I can't think of any on the client side as the job wasn't working as it was intended but it may cause extra load on the motd server.

  Original Description
  --------------------
  I have a VM running on AWS. It was launched on May 9th:

    $ uptime
     05:26:21 up 12 days,  6:34,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
    $ date
    Wed May 22 05:26:24 UTC 2019

  I touched none of the system defaults, and yet the motd has not
  updated automatically.

    $ ls -l /var/cache/motd-news
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May  9 22:53 /var/cache/motd-news

  The systemd timer unit looks like this:

    $ systemctl status motd-news.timer
    ● motd-news.timer - Message of the Day
       Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/motd-news.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
       Active: active (elapsed) since Thu 2019-05-09 22:51:58 UTC; 1 weeks 5 days ago
      Trigger: n/a

    May 09 22:51:58 ip-172-31-23-224 systemd[1]: Started Message of the
  Day.

  If I run /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force manually, the file
  does update correctly.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/1829968/+subscriptions