[Bug 2015420] Re: motd: esm and normal update messages are intertwined

[martinr]

Even when ESM is not enabled and there are no ESM updates pending. ESM evangelisation will still be displayed at logon.
Here is a copy of such messages that keep appearing at each logon (as appearing in Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-1026-raspi armv7l)):

    Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.
    
    Enable ESM Apps to receive additional future security updates.
    See https://ubuntu.com/esm or run: sudo pro status

The messages take up screen real-estate and become more annoying and
less informative every time they are repeated. To get to the real MOTD
content people need to scroll back at every logon.

The problem is that the messages can't be configured off without also
loosing pending updates information.

The messages are not emitted through the normal MOTD processing (update-motd).
They are generated by update-notifier and cached in:
"/var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available"
by Python script:
/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2015420

Title:
  motd: esm and normal update messages are intertwined

Status in update-notifier package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  See https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-pro-client/issues/2458 for the
  origin of the conversation.

  We don't think it needs to be _easy_, but it should probably be less
  burdensome to disable ESM update notifications in MOTD without
  disabling all update notifications in MOTD.

  One idea to accomplish this is to separate the /etc/update-motd.d/
  files into two. One would print the normal update message, and the
  other would print the ESM message. Then, if an admin knows what
  they're doing and is willing to accept the risk, they can remove or
  edit the ESM update-notifier motd conffile. This is similar to how you
  can remove the APT ESM messages by removing/editing
  /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf if you know what you're doing.

  This would also require some changes to how the messages are created,
  since currently it is all in apt_check.py and printed into a single
  message file. They'll need to be separated somehow.

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