Please suggest running apt update & apt upgrade in MOTD when list of available packages is old

It seems the update counts generally may not be populated correctly on initial login.

Under 19.04 I'm currently seeing these counts on initial login...

52 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.

...but then immediately after login...

sudo cat /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available

66 updates can be installed immediately.
8 of these updates are security updates.

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.192.27

---------------
update-notifier (3.192.27) focal; urgency=medium

  * Notify user about stale updates information in motd (LP: #1842159)
  * Make /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available world-readable
    (LP: #1844704)
  * data/update-motd-hwe-eol: Run as a regular user without printing errors
    (LP: #185527)
  * data/update-motd-hwe-eol: Shortcut script when running in a container.
    There is no point in checking the HWE stack in a container since upgrading
    it would not affect the host system. (LP: #1855290)
  * data/update-motd-fsck-at-reboot: Shortcut script when running it as
    a regular user (LP: #185527)

 -- Balint Reczey <email address hidden> Thu, 05 Dec 2019 15:02:52 +0100

Hello Balint, or anyone else affected,

Accepted update-notifier into eoan-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/3.192.26.1 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 on 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-eoan to verification-done-eoan. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-eoan. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

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

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

root@ee-motd-verify:~# update-motd
Welcome to Ubuntu 19.10 (GNU/Linux 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Mon Dec 16 14:12:40 UTC 2019

  System load: 0.95 Processes: 28
  Usage of /home: unknown Users logged in: 0
  Memory usage: 0% IP address for eth0: 10.84.73.58
  Swap usage: 38%

28 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

root@ee-motd-verify:~# touch -t 01010101 /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available
root@ee-motd-verify:~# update-motd
Welcome to Ubuntu 19.10 (GNU/Linux 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Mon Dec 16 14:13:01 UTC 2019

  System load: 0.9 Processes: 28
  Usage of /home: unknown Users logged in: 0
  Memory usage: 0% IP address for eth0: 10.84.73.58
  Swap usage: 38%

28 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

The list of available updates is more than a week old.
To check for new updates run: sudo apt update

root@ee-motd-verify:~# rm /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available
root@ee-motd-verify:~# update-motd
Welcome to Ubuntu 19.10 (GNU/Linux 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Mon Dec 16 14:13:15 UTC 2019

  System load: 1.0 Processes: 28
  Usage of /home: unknown Users logged in: 0
  Memory usage: 0% IP address for eth0: 10.84.73.58
  Swap usage: 38%

The list of available updates is more than a week old.
To check for new updates run: sudo apt update

root@ee-motd-verify:~# apt update -qq
28 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
root@ee-motd-verify:~# update-motd
Welcome to Ubuntu 19.10 (GNU/Linux 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Mon Dec 16 14:13:28 UTC 2019

  System load: 0.78 Processes: 28
  Usage of /home: unknown Users logged in: 0
  Memory usage: 0% IP address for eth0: 10.84.73.58
  Swap usage: 38%

28 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

root@ee-motd-verify:~# dpkg -l update-notifier-common | cat
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-======================-============-============-==========...

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 3.192.26.1

---------------
update-notifier (3.192.26.1) eoan; urgency=medium

  * Notify user about stale updates information in motd (LP: #1842159)
  * Make /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available world-readable
    (LP: #1844704)
  * data/update-motd-hwe-eol: Run as a regular user without printing errors
    (LP: #1855271)
  * data/update-motd-hwe-eol: Shortcut script when running in a container.
    There is no point in checking the HWE stack in a container since upgrading
    it would not affect the host system. (LP: #1855290)
  * data/update-motd-fsck-at-reboot: Shortcut script when running it as
    a regular user (LP: #1855271)

 -- Balint Reczey <email address hidden> Thu, 05 Dec 2019 15:02:52 +0100

The verification of the Stable Release Update for update-notifier has completed successfully and the package is now being 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.