Re: Debian package management with cfengine

[Brendan Strejcek]

Moritz Bunkus wrote:

> This did work rather well with joe, but I ran into some problems with
> another package and its config files. Therefore I'd like some input on
> how you are doing package management.

A large effort is needed to actually make Debian packages install
noninteractively. DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive is not enough.

I also use these apt options:

DPkg::Options {"--force-confold";};

(That is the contents of my /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/30dpkg_force_confold.)

This is important if, for example, you are upgrading a package and a
config file has been modified. Even if DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
has been set, it will wait for admin input unless you specify
--force-confold or --force-confnew.

I try to deactivate debconf as much as possible, as I use centralized
means to configure software. For example, I comment out this line from
the apt config (which is default, I think):

//DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true";};

You can also configure some behavior in /etc/debconf.conf. I like:

Frontend: noninteractive
Admin-Email:

Setting Admin-Email to the empty string makes it so debconf does not
mail lots of annoying (and useless) info when running in noninteractive
mode.

I still have not found a nice way to wrap dpkg due to the ridiculous
number of states a package can be in.

-- Brendan