[Bug 1823070] Re: unattended-upgrades should tell the user (via motd) when security updates are held back

[Balint Reczey]

root at uu-sru-x:~# unattended-upgrade --verbose
Initial blacklisted packages: 
Initial whitelisted packages: 
Starting unattended upgrades script
Allowed origins are: o=Ubuntu,a=xenial, o=Ubuntu,a=xenial-security, o=UbuntuESM,a=xenial
Packages that will be upgraded: 
root at uu-sru-x:~# update-motd
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.0.0-32-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

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


1 updates could not be installed automatically. For more details,
see /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log

root at uu-sru-x:~# dpkg -l unattended-upgrades | cat
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                Version                    Architecture Description
+++-===================-==========================-============-===========================================
ii  unattended-upgrades 1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.4 all          automatic installation of security upgrades


** Tags removed: verification-needed verification-needed-bionic verification-needed-xenial
** Tags added: verification-done verification-done-bionic verification-done-xenial

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1823070

Title:
  unattended-upgrades should tell the user (via motd) when security
  updates are held back

Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Xenial:
  Fix Committed
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Disco:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  [Impact]

   * MOTD does not go into details about upgradable packages being security fixes or just normal updates.
   * Users should be made aware if some of the security updates could not have been applied.
   * The fix is adding a snipped to MOTD where the number of packages kept back by unattended-upgrades is shown.

  [Test Case]

   * The debian/tests/upgrade-all-security is extended to check if the number of kept back packages are shown in MOTD and a new test is added (test/test_motd.py) to check if the list of kept back packages are saved properly.
   * To test the fix manually:
     1. Mark a package upgradable from the -security pocket as held, then run unattended-upgrades.
     2. Observe MOTD messate showing the number of packages being kept back.

  [Regression Potential]

   * Unattended-upgrades may crash when saving kept packages and always
  return with failure. MOTD may hang or print error while printing the
  packages kept back by u-u.

   * It is not a regression, but the log referenced in MOTD does not
  always contain explanation why each package was kept back, unless
  debugging is enabled. One case where packages are not mentioned in the
  log is when the packages are held using 'apt-mark hold' command.

  [Original Bug Text]

  Currently we have the following pieces as part of the default UX on
  Ubuntu 18.04 and later:

   1) unattended-upgrades automatically installs security updates daily by default
   2) the motd reports the number of available updates, including security updates.

  A user who knows about 1) also knows that a non-zero number of pending
  security updates listed in 2) is nothing to worry about.

  However, unattended-upgrades will also cleverly detect when a security
  update cannot safely be installed non-interactively due to conffile
  changes on the system.

  In this case, unattended-upgrades should also inform the user via the
  motd that these updates are not being installed.  Otherwise, there's
  nothing to tell the user that the non-zero count of available security
  updates in motd is a *problem*.

  Suggested wording:

   N security updates will not be automatically installed due to local changes.
   See /var/log/foo for details.

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