Comment 18 for bug 1637800

I installed the version of base-files from Ubuntu 18.04's proposed repository and after installation of the package not timer was running for motd-news. I rebooted to see if that would active the timer and it did not.

bdmurray@clean-xenial-amd64:~$ ls -lh /var/cache/motd-news
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 18 12:32 /var/cache/motd-news
bdmurray@clean-xenial-amd64:~$ systemctl list-timers --all
NEXT LEFT LAST PASSED UNIT ACTIVATES
Thu 2019-07-18 21:33:41 PDT 8h left Thu 2019-07-18 12:20:38 PDT 1h 8min ago apt-daily.timer apt-daily.service
Fri 2019-07-19 06:01:14 PDT 16h left Thu 2019-07-18 12:20:38 PDT 1h 8min ago apt-daily-upgrade.timer apt-daily-upgrade.service
Fri 2019-07-19 12:47:35 PDT 23h left Thu 2019-07-18 12:47:35 PDT 41min ago systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
n/a n/a n/a n/a snapd.refresh.timer
n/a n/a n/a n/a snapd.snap-repair.timer snapd.snap-repair.service
n/a n/a n/a n/a ureadahead-stop.timer ureadahead-stop.service

6 timers listed.
bdmurray@clean-xenial-amd64:~$ uptime
 13:29:32 up 57 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
bdmurray@clean-xenial-amd64:~$ apt-cache policy base-files
base-files:
  Installed: 9.4ubuntu4.10
  Candidate: 9.4ubuntu4.10
  Version table:
 *** 9.4ubuntu4.10 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     9.4ubuntu4.8 500
        500 https://ubuntu.osuosl.org/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
     9.4ubuntu4 500
        500 https://ubuntu.osuosl.org/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages