Update Ubuntu 10.04

Solution 1:

This is coming from the MOTD (Message Of The Day). The MOTD is pieced together from the commands in /etc/update-motd.d. The specific message comes from running /etc/update-motd.d/90-updates-available.

I have seen this happen on systems where after running sudo apt-get update and packages are kept back

The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.

The message can mean several things e.g. there may be dependency issues etc. there is more on this in the APT HowTo.

I have managed to stop the messages with

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

If that doesn't work then the link above does give advice on how to track down the problem packages.

Solution 2:

Another one of these "fine" Ubuntu-bugs... Check Ubuntu Bug #634387: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/634387

I deleted the files "/etc/motd.tail" and "/etc/motd.tail.old" and did a logout / login to re-genereate a propper /etc/motd.

---

Solution 3:

I was seeing this same issue on Ubuntu 14.04

I edited /etc/pam.d/sshd

and changed this line
session optional pam_motd.so motd=/run/motd.dynamic noupdate

by removing the noupdate

now the banner displays correctly.

---

Solution 4:

Run the following command:

sudo /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-updates-available --force