(Solved) dpkg-reconfigure debconf

["David R. Litwin" <presently42@gmail.com>]

okay okay I get it. you can't reconfigure debconf because reconfigure wants to use KDE...
well per man debconf, there is more info in debconf(7) part of debconf-doc. apt-get install debconf-doc; man 7 debconf; found this:
passing --frontend= to dpkg-reconfigure will specify the frontend to use. so try
the options are dialog, readline, etc etc.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure debconf --frontend=dialog
should do the trick.

Indeed it did. When I had tried it the first time, I wrote dialogue in lieu of dialog.

Thanks much.

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