Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > the first-time install process _does_ say "set the > dselect communication method, you can change it easily later on" > but it doesn't say HOW!!!! Um, did you install Debian 2.2 (potato)? IIRC, that was the last version of Debian to ask you anything about debconf when it was installed. Of course, it doesn't use the words you used above, since this has nothing to do with dselect. I suspect you are misremembering whatever it is you saw. > additionally, finding _out_ how is totally impossible unless > you happen to know. > > it's not specified anywhere. > > man debconf shows -ftype which i only just found in the last > 30 seconds but it is not specified what the front-end types > are! All the debconf man pages also refer you via the SEE ALSO section to debconf(7), which has a complete user tutorial, descriptions of all available debconf frontends, and examples of everything. Frontends One of debconf's unique features is that the interface it presents to you is only one of many, that can be swapped in at will. There are many debconf frontends available: dialog The default frontend, this uses the whiptail (1) or dialog (1) programs to display questions to you. It works in text mode. readline The most traditional frontend, this looks quite similar to how Debian configuration always has been: a series of questions, printed out at the console using plain text, and prompts done using the readline library. It even supports tab completion. The libterm-readline-gnu-perl package is strongly recommended if you chose to use this frontend; the default readline module isn't really good enough. This frontend has some special hotkeys. Pageup (or ctrl-u) will go back to the previous question (if that is supported by the package that is using debconf), and pagedown (or ctrl-v) will skip forward to the next question. This is the best frontend for remote admin work over a slow con- nection, or for those who are comfortable with unix. noninteractive This is the anti-frontend. It never interacts with you at all, and makes the default answers be used for all questions. It will occasionally mail root with messages the package wanted to dis- play, but that's it; otherwise it is completly silent and unob- trusive, a perfect frontend for automatic installs. If you are using this front-end, and require non-default answers to ques- tions, you will need to pre-populate the debconf database; see the section below on Unattended Package Installation for more details. gnome This is a modern X GUI using the gtk and gnome libraries. Of course, it requires a valid DISPLAY to work; debconf will fall back to other frontends if it can't work. Note that this fron- tend requires you have the libgnome-perl package installed. editor This is for those fanatics who have to do everything in a text editor. It runs your editor on a file that looks something like a typical unix config file, and you edit the file to communicate with debconf. Debconf's author takes the fifth amendment regard- ing the circumstances that led to this frontend being written. web This frontend acts as a web server, that you connect to with your web browser, to browse the questions and answer them. It has a lot of promise, but is a little rough so far. When this frontend starts up, it will print out the location you should point your web browser to. You have to run the web browser on the same machine you are configuring, for security reasons. Do keep in mind that this is not a very secure frontend. Anyone who has access to the computer being configured can currently access the web server and configure things while this frontend is running. So this is more of a proof of concept than anything. You can change the default frontend debconf uses by reconfiguring deb- conf. On the other hand, if you just want to change the frontend for a minute, you can set the DEBIAN_FRONTEND environment variable to the name of the frontend to use. For example: DEBIAN_FRONTEND=readline apt-get install slrn The dpkg-reconfigure (8) and dpkg-preconfigure (8) commands also let you pass --frontend= to them, followed by the frontend you want them to use. Note that not all frontends will work in all circumstances. If a fron- tend fails to start up for some reason, debconf will print out a mes- sage explaining why, and fall back to the next-most similar frontend. -- see shy jo
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