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victorgp
Asked: 2010-12-10 09:51:08 +0800 CST

Disable prompts while installing a Debian package

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How can i disable totally the prompts that appear while installing a Debian package, i've used all the options that i've found but there are some packages that are still prompting.

I'm using this command:

apt-get -y --allow-unauthenticated --force-yes -o DPkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" -o DPkg::Options::="--force-confdef" install x11-common

Why the x11-common package is still prompting? how can i get rid of these prompts?

Thanks in advance

--Victor

Edit: just to clarify, the prompts are not "yes/no" prompts, are open questions in a coloured screen (typical two color screen) but i want to set the default option of these questions

ubuntu debian packages apt repository

4 Answers

  1. Select a new front end by setting your env.

    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y install x11-common

    I use this all the time in automating package installation with cfengine.

    • 43

  2. Not having manually install x11-common, I am not sure what questions you are being asked. But if they are coming from debconf, then you should be able to pre-answer the questions with debconf-set-selections.

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  3. You need to dpkg-reconfigure debconf and tell it to "Ignore questions with a priority less than: Critical".

    This doesn't get you out of answering critical questions.

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  4. To disable the prompts globally for reconfiguring all packages with debconf, just comment out the second line from /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf file.

    Or if you're provisioning VM, add these commands to your provision script:

    sudo ex +"%s@DPkg@//DPkg" -cwq /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
sudo dpkg-reconfigure debconf -f noninteractive -p critical

    You may also try the same way how Travis CI does it:

    sudo -E apt-get -yq --no-install-suggests --no-install-recommends --force-yes install some_package

    For some other packages, like ttf-mscorefonts-installer (which is dependent on language-pack-en), the above seems to not work, so try:

    echo ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula select true | sudo debconf-set-selections
sudo apt-get install -y language-pack-en
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