Every time there is the smallest change in upstream config files, the
config system gets invoked to ask terminal-based questions on what to
do.

The "show differences" options spin CPU for a good 30 seconds before
eventually they run.

The "just give me a shell" option in fact just prints
  No terminal, and no DISPLAY set, can't fork shell.

and is therefore equally useless.

I can't even Ctrl-Z the program to fix it myself.


My solution therefore is to just shell in again, vimdiff between the
real config file and the one I find in /usr/share, then when I'm happy
with the differences, just ask the config manager program to "keep
installed version".


Rather than making me bypass what othewise looks like a shiney
mechanism, can it please be made to work nicer?

Is this just happening with dovecot or all apps that ask configuration
questions?  Because it is actually a package called debconf that handles
this and it seems to be misconfigured.

Le Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 10:28:11AM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas a écrit :

Hello,

I just upgraded a system from Lenny to Squeeze, and indeeed, only dovecot
showed this problem.

In particular, while all the other configuration upgrades were made in the
simple text interface (the one that invites to press Y/N/D/Z), only dovecot
triggered a ncurses interface that reproduced the problems described above
(extreme slowness to produce diffs, impossibiltiy to fork a shell).

All in all, it looks more like the source of the problem is ucf rather than
debconf. See in particular http://bugs.debian.org/543367 (duplicated in #574266)

Have a nice day,