Re: Debconf broken
On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Joey Hess wrote:
> >
> > which also leads to no output at all and a strace endet in
> >
> > fork() = 8104
> > wait4(-1,
>
> and reconfigure debconf again some of the debug information will provide
> a clue to what's going on.
# export DEBCONF_DEBUG=.
# dpkg-reconfigure debconf
debconf (db): making DbDriver of type File
debconf (db configdb): started; filename is /var/cache/debconf/config.dat
debconf (db configdb): loading database
debconf (db): making DbDriver of type File
debconf (db templatedb): started; filename is /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat
debconf (db templatedb): loading database
debconf (user): trying frontend Gnome
Seams reasonable for me because I just switched from the curses based
frontend to Gnome because this would make sense when using gkconfig.
This seemd to solve the problem: If I do the installation directly on the
machine in question (it's my laptop where I fiddled around while sitting
in a train) all works fine. But mostly I do installations on this box
via ssh (when I'm at work or at home I use a normal keybord and bigger
screen). In this cases the Gnome frontend seems to cause the trouble.
If I switch back to frontend "Dialog" (using my laptop) directly all
went back to normal state using the ssh connection.
By the way the Gnome frontend seems to be a little bit broken. A
dpkg-reconfigure debconf
does not present a list of available frontends. It only has a single
entry "Gnome" and I was not able to switch back to use this. Fortunately
I just learned to know gkdebconf which enables me to switch the frontend
*before* the configuration of debconf. There I switched to dialog and
was able to adjust all things back to dialog - and thus a working system.
Resume: There are two bugs:
1. The Gnome frontend might be unusable via ssh connections.
I use the careful 'might be' because I can not exclude a
missconfiguration on my side. In fact I can start any X program
as normal user inside the ssh connection, but if I su to root
this does not work for any X application. So it is no debconf
issue in the first run, but perhaps there should be a mechanism
to avoid a completely frozen debconf.
So this is more or less a wishlist bug, because of the fact that not
debconf is broken but it should work around such broken installations.
2. The Gnome frontend does not natively enable switching back to other
frontends. This would be a real bug of severity "normal" in my
opinion.
Joey, should I bother the BTS with this stuff to keep a record of this
problem?
Kind regards and thanks for developing debconf
Andreas.
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