Ubuntu shows updates / security updates on shell logins

Anders Rayner-Karlsson anders+fedora-devel at trudheim.co.uk
Sat Nov 7 22:46:36 UTC 2009


* James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org> [20091106 16:14]:
> On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 16:50 +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > Newly installed Ubuntu 9.10, when you log in over ssh you may see:
> > 
> >   34 packages can be updated.
> >   10 updates are security updates.
> > 
> > I think this is a nice feature, because many administrators will log
> > in to servers remotely over ssh and never see the graphical
> > indications from packagekit et al.
> > 
> > Actually I was trying to work out how it's implemented.  The text goes
> > into /etc/motd, and as near as I can tell, the Ubuntu "update-manager"
> > (roughly equivalent of PackageKit) rewrites it whenever packages
> > become available or get installed.  Is this something that PackageKit
> > could also do?
> 
>  FWIW, I've added a summary-updateinfo command to the increasingly
> misnamed security plugin.
>  Takes all the same options as list-updateinfo / info-updateinfo, but
> just prints a small summary:
> 
> % yum -q summary-updateinfo 
> Updates Info Summary:
>      6 Security update(s)
>     56 Bugfix update(s)
>     10 Enhancement update(s)
> % yum -q summary-updateinfo new
> Updates Info Summary:
>     706 New Package update(s)
> %
> 
> ...putting that in motd, or whatever, is your fight :).
> 

Which can be trivially cron'ed. Then the Match parameter can be
equally trivially set up in sshd_config for root / selected
administrative users to display a separate motd to everyone else.

Addresses the "security" concerns and provides a useful feature. No?

-- 
Anders Rayner-Karlsson <anders at trudheim.co.uk>
All-Round Linux Tinkerer, RHCE and PITA DeLuxe




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