[Dict-common-dev] debconf-set-selection - default wordlist/ispell values ignored?

[Ingard Mevåg]

Hello again

I have been looking more into the problem now and it seems that its not 
the dictionaries-common package that is the problem itself. Another 
dependencie that is installed is the wamerican package, and it is when 
this package is configured that the select default wordlist whiptail 
prompt is presented, the isntallation of the dictionaries-common package 
itself doesnt prompt for anything when the default-wordlist option is 
preseeded.

As far as i can tell, upon installation of the wamerican package it 
calls /usr/share/dictionaries-common/dc-debconf-select.pl this script 
and I assume this is the reason for the prompt. I couldnt find any 
option in debconf-get-selections to preseed this in any way.

Any ideas?

regards
Ingard

Agustin Martin wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 05:52:12PM +0200, Ingard Mevåg wrote:
>   
>> Hello
>>
>> Im trying to configure cfengine to automatically install a server with a 
>> specific app. This app depends on dictionaries-common among other 
>> things. I have preseeded configuration of a few other packages, but the 
>> dictionaries-common seems not to care about my preseeded settings.
>>
>> The settings i am trying to preseed are the following:
>>
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/default-wordlist select american 
>> (American English)
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/invalid_debconf_value note   
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/ispell-autobuildhash-message 
>> note   
>> dictionaries-common 
>> dictionaries-common/selecting_ispell_wordlist_default note   
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/move_old_usr_dict boolean true
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/default-ispell select american 
>> (American English)
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/old_wordlist_link boolean true
>> dictionaries-common dictionaries-common/remove_old_usr_dict_link boolean 
>> false
>>
>> However, I will still get a question box asking about which wordlist and 
>> ispell i would like to set as default. Is this somehow a bug or is it 
>> some preseeding option that is lacking?
>>     
>
> dictionaries-common should honour LANG envvar (if present along with
> "/etc/default/locale") or debconf debian-installer/language otherwise. So
> if your installation is done under any of both conditions with the matching
> values you should not need any pre-seeding.
>
> Otherwise, if on first installation a pre-seeded value is found, a message
> like one of
>  
> Info: $question is already set to [$oldvalue]. Preserving it.
> Warning: $question is already set to [$oldvalue]. Not setting to [$value]
>
> should be given (with appropriate substitutions) and new value ignored.
> Did you see any of those messages when configuring dictionaries-common?
> Is interesting to know that before going into a deeper debugging.
>
> By the way you only need to preseed 'dictionaries-common/default-wordlist'
> and 'dictionaries-common/default-ispell'. It is unlikely that the other
> questions are asked.
>
> Note also that the first time, dictionaries-common, wordlists and ispell
> dicts should be installed in the same run.
>
> If that does not help you can try to do the installation with
>
> DICT_COMMON_DEBUG=1
>
> and record STDERR output.
>
> Hope this helps
>
>