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

[Agustin Martin]

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

-- 
Agustin