Re: Noninteractive "apt-get upgrade "question.

[Sam Watkins <swatkins@fastmail.fm>]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 02:57:53AM +1100, Sam Watkins wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 05:31:32PM +1100, Ivan Teliatnikov wrote:
> > What is the best way to "apt-get update" a classroom full of debian
> > sarge machines. 
> > 
> > I tired using
> > 
> > apt-get update
> > DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -uy dist-upgrade
> > 
> > Nevertheless I was asked some questions as follows:
> > 
> > Configuration file `/etc/profile'
> >  ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
> >  ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
> >    What would you like to do about it ?
> 
> If you're sure these are the only sort of question you'll get, which
> seems likely, then this should work:
> 
> yes n | apt-get update DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -uy dist-upgrade

I just noticed there are some dpkg options that cause it not to ask
these questions.

  --force-confold and --force-confnew

I wouldn't use --force-confnew, but --force-confold looks good.  One
could then merge the config files as a separate task, like gentoo's
dispatch-conf, as the new config files would be available as
/etc/foo.dpkg-new or /etc/foo.dpkg-dist or something.

You can apparently set this option permanently in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg
by adding a line:

  force-confold


this is certainly an improvement on my last suggestion, if it works!