20

When I ssh into my Mythbuntu box, I get this message:

Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-32-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

New release '12.10' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

Last login: <redacted>
$

But I don't intend to upgrade to 12.10, because Mythbuntu recommends using LTS releases only.

How do I suppress the "New release '12.10' available" message? I don't want to be notified until the next LTS release is available.

I've already gone to Update Manager > Settings > Updates and selected "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version: For long-term support versions", but that didn't get rid of this message.

5 Answers 5

32

The other answers aren't quite right, but combining them put me on the right track.

/etc/update-manager/release-upgrades controls what updates you'll be notified about. /usr/lib/update-manager/release-upgrade-motd generates the "update available" message. The problem is that release-upgrade-motd caches the message, which means that once it's been generated, changing /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades doesn't get rid of the message.

So the answer is:

  1. Tell Update Manager what releases you want to be notified about.

  2. sudo rm /var/lib/update-notifier/release-upgrade-available to get rid of the cached message.


Note: For version 13.04 (and later), the path has changed. So point 2. to get rid of the cached message is now:

sudo rm /var/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/release-upgrade-available
3
  • Just for future reference, Ubuntu's update-motd is designed to refresh on login as mentioned in the manpage. Oct 23, 2012 at 23:06
  • 1
    @JohnVrbanac, yes, but release-upgrade-motd maintains its own cache of its part of the motd. That's what you have to delete manually.
    – cjm
    Oct 23, 2012 at 23:08
  • This works great for me with Ubuntu 12.04! I added the following two lines to my setup script to turn off the prompts: sudo sed '17s/.*/prompt=never/' /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and sudo rm /var/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/release-upgrade-available Oct 29, 2014 at 13:36
6

That message is apart of the "Message Of The Day" (MOTD) system. If you just want to disable the update message:

Step 1:

Use a text editor to open "/etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade"

sudo nano /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade

Step 2:

Comment out (put "#" in front of each line) all of the code within that file so that it looks like this

#!/bin/sh

#if [ -x /usr/lib/update-manager/release-upgrade-motd ]; then
#    exec /usr/lib/update-manager/release-upgrade-motd
#fi

Step 3:

Logout and log back in.

Step 4:

Done!

That should work for both Ubuntu Server 11.10 and 12.04 LTS

2
  • 3
    This will completely disable the upgrade message. I'd still like to be notified when a LTS release is available. But you did point me to the correct solution, so thanks.
    – cjm
    Oct 23, 2012 at 23:04
  • Woops! Sorry I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to get rid of it all together. I generally don't like a bunch of stuff showing up when I first login, so I normally just remove it. Oct 23, 2012 at 23:08
3

Try Editding /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Change Prompt from normal to lts or never;-)

1
  • 1
    That is the current setting (I'm assuming the Update Manager GUI changed it). It doesn't help.
    – cjm
    Oct 23, 2012 at 22:45
1

What you see is the content of /etc/motd

which is automatically generated by scripts in :

/etc/update-motd.d/

the one you don't like is:

91-release-upgrade

so you can delete it.

Or may be better: edit : /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

and change : Prompt=normal by : Prompt=lts

So you will only be warned when a new lts is released.

0

For Ubuntu version 13.04 this has changed slightly, so this will consolidate the information from various other answers and update for newer releases.

- First solution is to modify the upgrades check configuration:

vi /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Change Prompt=normal to:
Prompt=never - Never check for upgrades
or
Prompt=lts - Only check for LTS upgrades (only if current release is LTS)

- Alternatively, to remove the check altogether, simply delete the check:

rm /etc/update-motd.d/91-release-upgrade

Finally: After making one of the above changes, the message may still be displaying as the daily check is cached.
Resolve this minor hurdle by simply deleting the cached check file:

rm /var/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/release-upgrade-available

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