The Debconf User's Guide

Joey Hess

The Debian Project

joeyh@debian.org

This text is distributed according to the General Public License.


Table of Contents
Introduction
Preconfiguring packages
Reconfiguring a package
Frontends
Priorities

Introduction

This is a guide to debconf, from the user's perspective. [1] Debconf is the new user interface that is popping up in increasing numbers of packages as you install them with dpkg. It provides a consistent interface to configuring packages, and lets you do some neat things you couldn't before. This guide will show you some of them. But best of all, it ensures that you only see each question once, not over and over each time you install a package, like you might have in the past.


Reporting Bugs

But first, please realize that debconf is still under development. I introduce new bugs from time to time. If debconf is misbehaving, please check the debconf bug list before filing a bug. You might also try the latest version of debconf in Incoming, as I have often seen and fixed the bug before you have. Please try to keep my workload down by not filing duplicate bug reports.

If you do file a bug report, tell me the frontend you were using when the problem occurred, what you did to trigger the problem, and paste any error messages you can into the bug report.


Preconfiguring packages

Debconf can configure packages before they are even installed onto your system. This is useful because it lets all the questions the packages are going to ask be asked at the beginning of an install, so the rest of the install can proceeed while you are away getting a cup of coffee. If you use apt, you have probably already seen this in action. Debconf sets up apt so debconf is run to preconfigure all packages apt installes, just before it installs them.

Sometimes you might want to preconfigure a package by hand, when you're not installing it with apt. You can use the dpkg-preconfigure command to do that, just pass it the filenames of the packages you want to preconfigure.


Reconfiguring a package

One of the first things you will probably want to use debconf for is to reconfigure a package. You installed the package, and answered debconf's questions, but now that you've used it a while, you realize you want to go back and cha