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Re: some ideas methods and techniques for dealing with excessively verbose or inquisitive or garrulous installation and upgrade messages :-) (was Re: New updated "1.2 installation problems" list.)



Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:

> automatic upgrades are already impossible.  Many packages ask questions.
> metamail & other packages that add mime types ask many (too many) questions.
> 
> I'd like to see an option which told the install-mime script to just
> accept the default response without prompting.

I agree.  There are packages that ask too many unimportant questions.
An option that signals dpkg to tell the packages to "use a default!
I'm sick of answering all of these <insert four-letter expletive here>
questions" would make upgrading my system much more comfortable.

> > Just print a short notice, that should be good enough.
> 
> printed notices are only useful if the user is watching the screen
> when they're printed...they usually scroll by too fast to read.

Some packages prompt the user to hit return to acknowledge their
notices.  The policy manual dictates that this should be done for
critical notices.  This also makes upgrading more painful.

Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com> writes:

> It would be *way* cool if dselect logged all of the stdout/stderr from
> the install phase to a file somewhere.  The HP-UX SD tools do this,
> and it's very nice to be able to launch an upgrade/install, go do
> something else, and come back to review the contents of the file
> before proceeding.

Unfortunately, this is not possible, in general, because the
configuration procedure of many packages is interactive (even if the
only interaction required by the user is to acknowledge a notice).
Perhaps what is needed is a way to tell the postinst script to
configure the packages non-interactively, using whatever defaults seem
reasonable (possibly telling the user what these defaults are), and
not pausing after displaying important notices.  If a package's
configuration procedure absolutely requires input from the user, then
its postinst script should fail when told to configure
non-interactively, thereby leaving the package installed but
unconfigured.

With this approach, the user could launch an upgrade/install with the
non-interactive option set, go do something else, and come back to
review the contents of the log file.  Then he or she could configure
the remaining packages, which could not be configured
non-interactively, simply with

    dpkg --configure --pending

Our goal should be to make the computer work for the user, not vice
versa.  Any thoughts?

--
Brian


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