Man page 8 : dpkg-preconfigure

dpkg-preconfigure - let packages ask questions prior to their installation

dpkg-preconfigure [options] package.deb dpkg-preconfigure --apt

dpkg-preconfigure lets packages ask questions before they are installed. It operates on a set of debian packages, and all packages that use debconf will have their config script run so they can examine the system and ask questions.

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

-pvalue, --priority=value 4 Set the lowest priority of questions you are interested in. Any questions with a priority below the selected priority will be ignored and their default answers will be used.

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

--apt 4 Run in apt mode. It will expect to read a set of package filenames from stdin, rather than getting them as parameters. Typically this is used to make apt run dpkg-preconfigure on all packages before they are installed. To do this, add something like this to /etc/apt/apt.conf: .Sp // Pre-configure all packages before // they are installed. DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs { "dpkg-preconfigure --apt --priority=low"; };

-h, --help 4 Display usage help.

debconf (7)

Joey Hess <>