Disable prompts while installing a Debian package

Question

How can i disable totally the prompts that appear while installing a Debian package, i've used all the options that i've found but there are some packages that are still prompting.

I'm using this command:

apt-get -y --allow-unauthenticated --force-yes -o DPkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" -o DPkg::Options::="--force-confdef" install x11-common

Why the x11-common package is still prompting? how can i get rid of these prompts?

Thanks in advance

--Victor

Answer 1

You need to tell debconf to use the noninteractive frontend, like this:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive" apt-get -y --allow-unauthenticated --force-yes -o DPkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" -o DPkg::Options::="--force-confdef" install x11-common

Answer 2

You don't provide any details about what prompt this is, but I am guessing it is debconf prompting for configuration questions.

If so, you can set debconf to noninteractive mode. For example, by doing dpkg-reconfigure debconf and then it will use the defaults for everything.

Regards.

Answer 3

The proper solution to avoid prompts without necessarily accepting defaults is to use preseeding. This means you populate the Debconf database with answers to the questions the package installation is going to ask, and then it won't ask because it gets the answers from the database.

You might still want to use an option to disable interactive prompting, just to be on the safe side.

(A lot of the preseeding documentation you find on the Internet is specifically about unattended system installation, but you can use preseeding for any individual package at any point before installing it.)