Ubuntu dpkg – Non-Interactive Installation Guide

aptbashdpkginstallationUbuntu

I am trying to install a bunch of .deb files without having to interact with them. MySQL Server for example will prompt for an interactive menu to enter an administrative password upon the dpkg's configuration.

I have tried.

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive && export DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical && sudo /usr/bin/dpkg -i ./files/*

I am aware that I can just extract the files without configuration. I am trying to create a bash script to deploy a server pre-configured of default installation of Apache, php, mySQL etc. However, this "interactive installation" is causing issues.

Any ideas on how to disable it? or a work around?

Thanks

Best Answer

You are on the right track. You definitely want to use DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive. For critical questions that cannot be ignored, you will want to preseed the debconf database with the necessary answers. The debconf man page has all the details about how to accomplish that.

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Ubuntu Postfix – How to Automate the Installation of Postfix

You can use pre-seeding for this, using the debconf-set-selections command to pre-answer the questions asked by debconf before installing the package.

For example:

debconf-set-selections <<< "postfix postfix/mailname string your.hostname.com"
debconf-set-selections <<< "postfix postfix/main_mailer_type string 'Internet Site'"
apt-get install --assume-yes postfix

How to get the history of “apt-get install” on Ubuntu

The apt history is in /var/log/apt/history.log as said in a comment above. That said, this will not list packages that were installed manually, using dpkg or GUIs such as gdebi. To see all the packages that went through dpkg, you can look at /var/log/dpkg.log.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu Postfix – How to Automate the Installation of Postfix

How to get the history of “apt-get install” on Ubuntu

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