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Dustin Oprea
Asked: 2016-05-14 17:57:18 +0800 CST

debian/ubuntu: Prevent UI prompting in command-line apt-get

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So, in order to prevent console-UI (newt, snack, dialog) prompts during the dpkg post-install, you have to do something like:

debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password password'
debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again password verify_password'
apt-get -y install mysql-server
  • Is there a rule for this?
  • How do we discover the prompt names/descriptors for other packages that invoke the console UI in order to prevent them?
  • Would we likely have to dig through the source-code to figure out how the prompts are invoked?
  • Is there a simple way to just choose all defaults (effectively clicking on whatever the default button would be and/or taking the correct text/options)?

Thanks.

NOTE

It looks like setting this variable is the solution for taking the defaults:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
ubuntu apt dpkg dialog

1 Answers

  1. This will reconfigure your package with default parameters:

    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive dpkg-reconfigure [package name]

    This will display parameters you set when installing a package:

    debconf-show [package name]

    This will output parameters you set when installing a package, formatted to be loaded in debconf-set-selections:

    debconf-get-selections | grep '^[package name]'

    To my knowledge, you can't display parameters for packages you didn't install; and you can't display default parameters without first re-configuring your package using the noninteractive option. You may want to use containers for testing purpose.

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