[Bug 1587204] Re: Spams motd with "proxy ... looks invalid"

[Brian Candler]

I am also getting this with 18.04.5 LTS.  In /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99proxy
I have:

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://127.0.0.1:3142/";
Acquire::https::Proxy "DIRECT";

and sometimes the the motd displays

proxy 'DIRECT' looks invalid

I have discovered why it's intermittent: that text is the *stderr*
output from /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release -q

This means it doesn't get stored in /var/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader
/release-upgrade-available, because only the *stdout* is redirected
there.

Therefore, it only gets displayed at login time when /usr/lib/ubuntu-
release-upgrader/release-upgrade-motd is run, and this only performs the
check if its previous output is more than 1 day old.

I also note that the script runs "check-new-release -q" in the
background (with &), which means that its stderr output could in
principle appear later on and be mixed up with other output. Perhaps
this is intentional, so that messages like "Failed to connect to
https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts. Check your Internet
connection or proxy settings" don't persist in the motd.

But in any case, "DIRECT" is a documented and valid form for proxy, so
it should not generate any warning.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1587204

Title:
  Spams motd with "proxy ... looks invalid"

Status in update-manager package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  On login, occasionally I see:

  proxy 'http://[<ipv6 address redacted>]:3128/' looks invalid

  I tracked this down to /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade which is
  calling "/usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release -q" when a
  cache is stale, and I can reproduce this every time by running "sudo
  usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release -q".

  It looks like UpdateManager/Core/utils.py has an incomplete regexp
  "http://\w+", which does not catch the square brackets used around an
  IPv6 address. Presumably the regexp needs extending. In my case I'm
  specifying my proxy by IP because I use Zeroconf names (using mdns)
  but in this case am using it inside a container that is bridged so
  .local names do not resolve there.

  This presumably means that it ignores my proxy definition too, though
  I haven't tested this.

  This is with update-manager-core 1:16.04.3 but it looks like the
  source from 1:16.10.1 is still affected.

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