Where does the "n packages can be upgraded" message come from

[sktsee]

On Mon, 16 May 2011 16:07:33 -0400, stan wrote:

> Lately I have been having issues with machines telling me that thier ar
> available upgrades when I log in, that do not appear, after an apt-get
> upgrade request. I thought I would look to see if soemthing wasn't
> updating this properly, so I went and looked in /etc/profile, thinking
> that was the logical place for that to be checked, but thier does not
> seem to be a check for that there.
> 
> Where can I find this?

I believe you are referring to the motd (message of the day) that's 
presented when logging into vt, or ssh session? I think there was a bug 
recently, perhaps with the post-install script for the package libpam-
modules (which contains pam_motd), that caused the "update available" 
messages to be written to /etc/motd.tail which is meant for admnistrator 
supplied static information. Anyway, check to see if you have that file 
and either delete it, or edit it remove the update messages.

Bug report url: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/766827

-- 
sktsee