[Bug 1691901] Re: 50-motd-news costs 5 seconds every login on firewalled systems

[Scott Moser]

Steve,
It should not be a requirement to have connectivity to motd.ubuntu.com to have quick login.
Its quite common to have ingress networking like we see in our labs.

I suggest the fix would be better to background the download and to
atomically move it the content into place.  Then the reader would just
display it if it were present.

Then,
 a.) pure failure to reach (ECONNREFUSED or EHOSTUNREACH) would simply show no data in motd.
 b.) hang would be gone and would simply not have data in the motd
 c.) fast success would be shown on this login
 d.) slower success would be shown on next login (possibly stale, which is always going to be a possibility)

** Changed in: base-files (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

** Changed in: base-files (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => High

-- 
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/1691901

Title:
  50-motd-news costs 5 seconds every login on firewalled systems

Status in base-files package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I noticed quite a long time to login to some of my systems via ssh (or scp).
  Investigating lead me to find out that the '50-motd-news' file
  (/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news) was the primary cost.

  In line 108 [1] it does something like:
   curl --connect-timeout "5" --max-time "5" -A "..." -o - https://motd.ubuntu.com

  The systems I'm seeing this on are in a lab and do not have access to https://motd.ubuntu.com.
  The way the lab is configured, they just end up timing out.  So every scp or ssh connection
  or other path to trigger update-motd will cost 5 seconds.

  --
  [1] https://git.launchpad.net/~usd-import-team/ubuntu/+source/base-files/tree/update-motd.d/50-motd-news?h=applied/ubuntu/zesty#n108

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.04
  Package: base-files 9.6ubuntu13
  ProcVersionSignature: User Name 4.10.0-21.23-generic 4.10.11
  Uname: Linux 4.10.0-21-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.4-0ubuntu4
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Fri May 19 01:11:30 2017
  Ec2AMI: ami-0000004f
  Ec2AMIManifest: FIXME
  Ec2AvailabilityZone: nova
  Ec2InstanceType: m1.small
  Ec2Kernel: unavailable
  Ec2Ramdisk: unavailable
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: base-files
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
  mtime.conffile..etc.update-motd.d.50-motd-news: 2017-05-19T01:10:25.572110

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/1691901/+subscriptions