Subject: Re: debconf: hangs on puppet installs on preseed install

From: Vincent Caron <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 23:27:13 +0100

Hello,

  I'm also using some unattended installation script from
preseed/late_command hook with Squeeze and had the same problem.

  It looks like a debconf frontend mismatch. If I want to use the
current d-i frontend while chrooted in /target I got:

  debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Newt

  And if I rely on the usual trick setting
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive, I got the famous "3: bad file
descriptor".

  I'd love to make my preseed script communicate with d-i's frontend but
it looks like it's not possible right now. My current workaround is to
start my preseed script with:

  export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
  unset  DEBIAN_HAS_FRONTEND
  unset  DEBCONF_REDIR
  unset  DEBCONF_OLD_FD_BASE

  Then this works reliably when run from preseed/late_command:

  chroot /target apt-get install -qq -y package ...