Ubuntu 14.04, dpkg-reconfigure select option unattended

Question

Via a script I am attempting to configure x11-common. Manually I have been able to run the command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure x11-common

then selected Anybody which worked.

I would like to programmatically provide the Anybody answer to the command.

I have tried sudo dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive x11-common

How is this possible?

Answer 1

You can use debconf-set-selections to preseed settings for such configuration scenes. First, on a system on which the package has been installed and configured, run:

debconf-get-selections | grep x11-common

This will tell you the selection identifiers (the name of the package, which you know, and the name and type of the question) you need in case you want to manually set them. In this case, the output would be something like:

x11-common  x11-common/xwrapper/allowed_users         select  Anybody
x11-common  x11-common/xwrapper/actual_allowed_users  string  anybody

Then you can do, on a system on which x11-common is yet to be installed, you can:

ssh first-system 'debconf-get-selections | grep x11-common' |
  sudo debconf-set-selections

Or, manually:

sudo debconf-set-selections <<EOF
x11-common  x11-common/xwrapper/allowed_users         select  Anybody
x11-common  x11-common/xwrapper/actual_allowed_users  string  anybody
EOF

Then, you can install x11-common and expect it use this setting while configuration:

sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install x11-common