Home / server / Questions / 227190
Accepted
jl6
Asked: 2011-01-27 08:19:22 +0800 CST

How do I ask apt-get to skip any interactive post-install configuration steps?

  • 772

I have a server build script which uses apt-get to install packages. It then puts pre-written configuration files directly in place, so the interactive post-install configuration dialog in packages such as postfix is not needed. How do I skip this stage of the installation? It creates a piece of manual intervention that I would rather avoid.

I am aware of the -qq option, but the manpage warns against using it without specifying a no-action modifier. I do want to perform an action, I just want to suppress a specific part of it.

ubuntu apt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can do a couple of things for avoiding this. Setting the DEBIAN_FRONTEND variable to noninteractive and using -y flag. For example:

    export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get -yq install [packagename]

    If you need to install it via sudo, use:

    sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -yq install [packagename]
    • 285

  2. I've found that setting -yqq and DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive don't work in some cases where apt-get stalls at the end with

    Restarting the system to load the new kernel will not be handled automatically, so you should consider
rebooting. [Return]

    It will not exit until after you press the enter key.

    My solution to this is to do everything everyone else suggested, but also with yes piped to apt-get as follows

    yes | sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -yqq purge 'my-package'
    • 1