Debian – How to install a system with apt-get without ncurses configuration screens

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I wrote a BASH script for doing an unattendend install on an ARM based Debian system. One of the packages being installed is samba.

I added

apt-get -y install samba

into my setup routine, but apt-get hangs due an ncurse configuration window for Samba workgroup.

How can I pass such windows? My script download the right smb.conf etc. after apt-get installed the packages.

Best Answer

-y or --assume-yes really should do it. Apparently not. :)

I think the thing to do is to put the answer in to the debconf database before installing the package. Then it'll already know the answer and shouldn't prompt. There's an example of doing that here.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Server — apt-get install commands fail

Your /etc/interfaces file looks fine, and since you managed to run apt-get update and apt-get upgrade successfully, this indicates that your network config is good.

As to why you can't install GNOME, the package is called gnome-desktop-environment rather than ubuntu-desktop. You may want to opt for gnome-core instead, which contains less bloat than the full blown desktop environment would.

If that doesn't work, please could you edit your original question to include the error text from apt-get.

Edit 1
Since you're getting package not found for everything, check out /etc/apt/sources.list and check the repositories for universe and multiverse aren't commented out (i.e have a # at the beginning of the line). If they are, remove the # and try again.

Edit 2
For the key error, try the following command sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 16126D3A3E5C1192. (Source)

Ubuntu – How to Skip Interactive Post-Install Configuration Steps in APT-GET

You can do a couple of things for avoiding this. Setting the DEBIAN_FRONTEND variable to noninteractive and using -y flag. For example:

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get -yq install [packagename]

If you need to install it via sudo, use:

sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -yq install [packagename]

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Server — apt-get install commands fail

Ubuntu – How to Skip Interactive Post-Install Configuration Steps in APT-GET

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