[Bug 1031357] [NEW] DEBIAN_FRONTEND environment variable ignored

[David Wei]

Public bug reported:

I'm running a Precise amd64 AMI (ami-a29943cb) on Amazon EC2. When
running 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get -y upgrade' in a script with
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive set, I still get the following error from
debconf:

ERROR: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
ERROR: debconf: (Dialog frontend will not work on a dumb terminal, an emacs shell buffer, or without a controlling terminal.)
ERROR: debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
ERROR: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline
ERROR: debconf: (This frontend requires a controlling tty.)
ERROR: debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype
ERROR: dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: 

I get this using both OpenSSH 'ssh user at host "script.sh"' and Ruby's
Net::SSH implementation. However, when using OpenSSH's ssh, a GRUB
prompt does come up when defconf falls back to Teletype.

** Affects: debconf (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1031357

Title:
  DEBIAN_FRONTEND environment variable ignored

Status in “debconf” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I'm running a Precise amd64 AMI (ami-a29943cb) on Amazon EC2. When
  running 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get -y upgrade' in a script with
  DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive set, I still get the following error
  from debconf:

  ERROR: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
  ERROR: debconf: (Dialog frontend will not work on a dumb terminal, an emacs shell buffer, or without a controlling terminal.)
  ERROR: debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
  ERROR: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline
  ERROR: debconf: (This frontend requires a controlling tty.)
  ERROR: debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype
  ERROR: dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: 

  I get this using both OpenSSH 'ssh user at host "script.sh"' and Ruby's
  Net::SSH implementation. However, when using OpenSSH's ssh, a GRUB
  prompt does come up when defconf falls back to Teletype.

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