update-notifier presents unclear update message

Obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/1179/

Thanks for your bugreport.

I can reproduce this bug here. The code is using strftime("%x") so it should print a localized date. And the motd pam.d is run after the pam module loads /etc/default/locale. I'm investigating further.

Good to know what it is, probably still should be unambiguous though.

@Nick: Yeah! Its kind of ironic that I was using iso dates before and during the internal testing it was suggested to use the dates based on the locale. Oh well.

It turns out that pam-motd runs the update-motd stuff without LANG/LOCALE information.
"""
+ if (!system("/usr/bin/env -i PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin run-parts --lsbsysinit /etc/update-motd.d > /run/motd.dynamic.new"))
"""

So to fix that, something like:
"""
  char cmd[255];
  char *language = pam_getenv(pamh, "LANGUAGE");
  if(language == NULL) language = "";
  char *lang = pam_getenv(pamh, "LANG");
  if(locale == NULL) locale = "";
  snprintf(cmd, sizeof(cmd), "/usr/bin/env -i LANGUAGE=\"%s\" LANG=\"%s\" PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin run-parts --lsbsysinit /etc/update-motd.d > /run/motd.dynamic.new", language, lang);
  if(!system(cmd))
"""
I would love to get feedback from the pam maintainer if that is something we want to support, I'm happy to write the code for this. But given the side-effects that all update-motd scripts are suddenly running localized I think simply going to iso date format in the script is the better option for now.

Ignore the typos in the code (locale == NULL) locale = ""; should really be "lang" instead.

Hello Robin, or anyone else affected,

Accepted update-manager into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/1:0.156.14.16 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Thanks, though I don't think I can test it on our servers because they're production and putting proposed on them seems not ideal. Not sure how to produce the message in a VM.

Looks good, changes date from 08/07/2014 to 2014-08-07. So marked verification-done.

The verification of the Stable Release Update for update-manager has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

This bug was fixed in the package update-manager - 1:0.156.14.16

---------------
update-manager (1:0.156.14.16) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * HweSupportStatus/consts.py:
    - use ISO date format instead of the locales date format because
      pam_motd does not set the LANG environment (LP: #1342424)
  * hwe-support-status:
    - fix crash with hwe-support-status --show-all-unsupported,
      thanks to "frankster" (LP: #1341324)
 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:38:59 +0200

I've forward ported the HWE support status code to Yakkety, so I'm setting this to Fix Released.