After LTS upgrade to 16.04, no more emails come from apt-listchanges

Could you please paste the content of your /etc/apt/listchanges.conf?

[apt]
frontend=pager
email_address=root
confirm=0
save_seen=/var/lib/apt/listchanges.db
which=news

Per the package's changelog:

apt-listchanges (2.85.14ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Merge with Debian; remaining changes:
    - apt-listchanges/DebianFiles.py: only use apt-get changelog if which is
      changelogs or both, so not for news.

 -- Matthias Klose <email address hidden> Wed, 17 Feb 2016 14:53:58 +0100

I spot in the conf which=news so what exactly is not being done when set to news?

Yes, your config entry indicates that you are interested only in the NEWS entries, but not the changelog ones. Use 'dpkg-reconfigure apt-listchanges' command to change that by selecting "both" for the 4th question.

(The output related to openssl that you quoted in https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2351236 comes from the changelog file, not from the NEWS file).

Regards,
robert

All right, stepping way back. The original purpose of apt-listchanges was to receive email notifications of changes applied to nodes. Both LTS upgrades arriving at, and new installations of, Ubuntu 16.04 send no notifications when updates are applied to systems.

So as of 16.04, are you saying that one needs to both install the apt-listchanges packages AND use 'dpkg-reconfigure apt-listchanges' command to change that by selecting "both" for the 4th question. That by itself, installing the apt-listchanges packages is no longer sufficient? That with the 16.04 version of the apt-listchanges package it is intentional for it to do nothing until 'dpkg-reconfigure apt-listchanges' has been run? I say it is very odd / unintuitive if that be the direction.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This bug was fixed in the package apt-listchanges - 3.14

---------------
apt-listchanges (3.14) unstable; urgency=low

  * Add `--no-network' option that can be used to disable calls to
    `apt-get changelog' (closes: #866583) and document it in the man page.
  * Rework handling of the LESS variable: instead of overriding it, detect
    if it contains harmful settings, and try to disable them by appending
    `-+E' or `-+F' options (closes: #867144).
  * Improve handling of configuration file by debconf-helper.py:
    + refactor the script and prepare for further changes;
    + increase priority of the `apt-listchanges/which' question to medium;
    + set the debconf's `seen' flag for items that already exist in the
      configuration file;
  * Add debconf support for the following configuration options:
    `--no-network', `--reverse' (closes: #707668), `--headers',
    and `--email-format'. Re-order the debconf questions.
  * Depend on python3-debconf (closes: #867126) and check if the debconf
    module can be successfully imported before running debconf-helper.py
    in debian/config.
  * Remove the `-k 60' option from po4a.cfg to disable generation of
    outdated Spanish and Italian man pages (closes: #842996).
  * Fix a typo in man page and unfuzzy translations.
  * Update README.Debian and the man page to make it clear that in the
    default installations only the NEWS entries are displayed during
    upgrades (LP: #1662550).
  * Update *.pot and .*.po files.
  * Update Polish translations.
  * Add debian/NEWS entry for the recent changes.

 -- Robert Luberda <email address hidden> Sun, 09 Jul 2017 10:11:29 +0200

So since it is stated that a fix is released for this issue... does that mean that Ubuntu has agreed that it is incorrect to have to change the configuration of this package from its installation default in order to receive change log emails from apt?