[NBLUG/talk] Automated "apt-get upgrade" problems

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 11:09:56AM -0700, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> I have my Debian/unstable box configured to update itself every day at
> midnight.  However, it seems that some of the new package require user
> intervention to install, and strange things appear to be happening when
> they try to install.  For example:
> 
> Setting up php4-pgsql (4.3.3-2) ...
> debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
> debconf: (TERM is not set, so the dialog frontend is not usable.)
> debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
> debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline
> debconf: (This frontend requires a controlling tty.)
> debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype
> 
> If I later run "apt-get upgrade" from the command line, it tells me that
> there are no new packages to be installed.  It seems that the package
> that needed dialogs managed to install anyway, but I have no idea what
> the questions were or how they were answered, and I can't seem to find a
> way to reconfigure them if I find that I need to.

I strongly urge you to read Frank's reply to this and simply automatically
*download* packages but never automatically *install* packages.

However, that said.

For this specific example, "dpkg-reconfigure php4-pgsql" should ask you
whatever questions there were again.

Also, "dpkg-reconfigure debconf" offers a noninteractive option you may wish
to use, which would eliminate the questions in the first place.

But, again, Frank's suggestion of "apt-get --download-only" is a much better
idea.
-- 
Eric Eisenhart
NBLUG Co-Founder & Director-At-Large
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org/
eric at nblug.org, IRC: Freiheit at freenode, AIM: falschfreiheit, ICQ: 48217244