Comment 11 for bug 423856

It should *not* send any user- or system-specific data. I will be opposed to any utility that does this without user consent.

The ec2-upgrade-available utility will:

 1) Source /etc/ubuntu-image (if it exists) to obtain a URI.
  * Admins who want to disable this feature would simply remove this file.
  * Alternatively, admins could set this URI to a different or locally mirrored URI, if they desire.

 2) Use curl to retrieve $URI, and cache it locally in /var/run/ec2-upgrade-available, which is cleared on reboot

 3) URI would look something like:
URI=http://imagestore.canonical.com/api/images/ubuntu-9.10-amd64

 4) On login, if /var/run/ec2-upgrade-available exists, pam_motd will insert friendly, helpful text toward the bottom of the system MOTD (same as updates-available, release-upgrade, reboot-required on all other Ubuntu installations)

 5) The URI would be pulled once at system boot (in the background), and then every 24 hours, by a cronjob dynamically created at boot, to randomize the load on targeted servers.

I believe that this design provides a system that allows both EC2 and UEC users of Ubuntu images to be informed of updates in a manner that:
 * does not impact system boot (the first retrieval occurs in the background)
 * does not impact overall system performance (24 hour caching cronjob seems reasonable)
 * does not impact login (only prints cached message)
 * mimics the design of apt-get-update retrieval of security notifications, and update-motd notification of such information
 * can be disabled by removing /etc/ubuntu-image
 * can be customized to point to a different URI

Are there still any objections?

:-Dustin