Smart and dpkg's debconf

[Anders F Björklund]

When installing dpkg packages, it is possible that they use "debconf"
to ask additional questions about the initial package configuration.

This replaced the earlier system of just waiting for input on stdin,
which might never come if there is no console - or no user present.


There are several frontends to debconf, so it needs to be configured...
The most common ones are: "dialog", "noninteractive", "gnome", "kde"

Here's some screenshots: http://www.algonet.se/~afb/deb/debconf.html
The default is "dialog", while PackageKit backend uses "noninteractive".


When running the graphic interface (gtk or qt), you want to set the
debconf frontend to a graphic mode (gnome or kde) or you'll get errors.

This problem is similar to how Smart runs in read-only mode, if you
start it with "smart --gui". (You'll need to use consolehelper/gksudo.)


Presently, smart doesn't handle either of configuration management
or administrative privileges. So that is all handled outside of it...

If you don't want smart to pop up any dialogs, you want to be using:
smart config --set deb-non-interactive=true

--anders