Disable Ubuntu PRO security news from ESM.

disable_apt_esm_ubuntu_pro_news.md

👾 Error

During apt upgrade you get Ubuntu PRO ESM related news. Sometimes, they get quite long and annoying.

🤔 Why do I see this error ?

At some point, you should have accepted to receive ubuntu-pro news.

🔎 How to solve ?

The clean and easy way is to rule out repo information of the esm security updates.

🕊️ Solution

There should be a file holding repository and GPG key information related to esm security updates. It is located under /var/lib/ubuntu-advantage/apt-esm/etc/apt/, but the exact file differs in between systems.

Open the repo config file by:

sudo gedit /var/lib/ubuntu-advantage/apt-esm/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-esm-apps.sources

or:

sudo gedit /var/lib/ubuntu-advantage/apt-esm/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-esm-apps.list

if not found, there should be a ubuntu-esm-apps.sources or ubuntu-esm-apps.list file near this location, could be in the parent folder.

After opening the correct file, comment out esm related repo information. In my case, that was sources file:

# Written by ubuntu-pro-client
# Types: deb
# URIs: https://esm.ubuntu.com/apps/ubuntu
# Suites: jammy-apps-security jammy-apps-updates
# Components: main
# Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-pro-esm-apps.gpg

Note

If it is a list file in your case, you may safely comment out deb and deb-src lines as long as they include esm.ubuntu... URLs.