Man page 1 : debconf

debconf - run a debconf-using program

debconf [options] command [args]

Debconf is a configuration system for Debian packages. For a debconf overview and documentation for sysadmins, see debconf (7) (in the debconf-doc package).

The debconf program runs a program under debconf's control, setting it up to talk with debconf on stdio. The program's output is expected to be debconf protocol commands, and it is expected to read result codes on stdin. See debconf-devel (7) for details about the debconf protocol.

The command to be run under debconf must be specified in a way that will let your PATH find it.

This command is not the usual way that debconf is used. It's more typical for debconf to be used via dpkg-preconfigure (8) or dpkg-reconfigure (8).

-opackage, --owner=package 4 Tell debconf what package the command it is running is a part of. This is necessary to get ownership of registered questions right, and to support unregister and purge commands properly.

-ftype, --frontend=type 4 Select the frontend to use.

-pvalue, --priority=value 4 Specify the minimum priority of question that will be displayed.

--terse 4 Enables terse output mode. This affects only some frontends.

To debug a shell script that uses debconf, you might use:

DEBCONF_DEBUG=developer debconf my-shell-prog

Or, you might use this:

debconf --frontend=readline sh -x my-shell-prog

debconf-devel (7), debconf (7)

Joey Hess <>