On Tue, 26 Jan 2021, Trent W. Buck wrote: > A minimum recipe to reproduce this is: > > $ mmdebstrap sid sid.tar.zst \ > --components='main contrib non-free' \ > --include=intel-microcode \ > --essential-hook='>$1/etc/default/intel-microcode echo > IUCODE_TOOL_INITRAMFS=yes IUCODE_TOOL_SCANCPUS=no' \ > --verbose > [...] > Setting up intel-microcode (3.20201118.1) ... > > Configuration file '/etc/default/intel-microcode' > ==> File on system created by you or by a script. > ==> File also in package provided by package maintainer. > What would you like to do about it ? Your options are: > Y or I : install the package maintainer's version > N or O : keep your currently-installed version > D : show the differences between the versions > Z : start a shell to examine the situation > The default action is to keep your current version.
That is a DPKG prompt, about a changed "conffile". You need to tell dpkg what it should do when it detects that a "conffile" has been changed [prior to installation of a package]. Keep in mind dpkg also prompts for this when a package upgrade changes a conffile that has been locally modified. Your options are in the dpkg manpage, and I don't know how you'd tell mmdebstrap how to specify them. If this is a bug, it affects *all* packages using conffiles (configuration files managed by dpkg) and mmdebstrap's method of preseeding them. > ALLEGEDLY when DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive (which mmdebstrap does), > that prompt should not appear, and method [A] should Just Work. dpkg is not debconf (which responds to DEBIAN_FRONTEND), it is far more low-level / basic. > PS: it's possible this applies to lots of packages, and > I just don't trigger it because 99% of them support "dropin" dirs > (e.g. rsyslog.d/foo.conf instead of rsyslog.conf). > If there's a dropin dir I can use for /etc/default/intel-microcode, > that's Good Enough for me. There's no dropin dir, as that'd be overkill for something like intel-microcode. For the same reason, it uses a plain dpkg conffile instead of elaborate script-driven "config files", which you could deal with through preseeding and DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive. > I can't see anything in /var/lib/dpkg/info/*microcode*inst that > looks relevant, so maybe this is a dpkg issue? It is an issue on how mmdebstrap and other such utilities interact with dpkg and user-modified conffiles, yes. And it affects every package that uses conffiles. -- Henrique Holschuh
