debconf – Configure a .deb package

Synopsis

  • Configure a .deb package using debconf-set-selections.
  • Or just query existing selections.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

  • debconf
  • debconf-utils

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Comments
name
string / required
Name of package to configure.

aliases: pkg
question
string
A debconf configuration setting.

aliases: selection, setting
unseen
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
Do not set 'seen' flag when pre-seeding.
value
string
Value to set the configuration to.

aliases: answer
vtype
string
    Choices:
  • boolean
  • error
  • multiselect
  • note
  • password
  • seen
  • select
  • string
  • text
  • title
The type of the value supplied.
It is highly recommended to add no_log=True to task while specifying vtype=password.
seen was added in Ansible 2.2.

Notes

Note

  • This module requires the command line debconf tools.
  • A number of questions have to be answered (depending on the package). Use ‘debconf-show <package>’ on any Debian or derivative with the package installed to see questions/settings available.
  • Some distros will always record tasks involving the setting of passwords as changed. This is due to debconf-get-selections masking passwords.
  • It is highly recommended to add no_log=True to task while handling sensitive information using this module.

Examples

- name: Set default locale to fr_FR.UTF-8
  debconf:
    name: locales
    question: locales/default_environment_locale
    value: fr_FR.UTF-8
    vtype: select

- name: Set to generate locales
  debconf:
    name: locales
    question: locales/locales_to_be_generated
    value: en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8, fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8
    vtype: multiselect

- name: Accept oracle license
  debconf:
    name: oracle-java7-installer
    question: shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1
    value: 'true'
    vtype: select

- name: Specifying package you can register/return the list of questions and current values
  debconf:
    name: tzdata

- name: Pre-configure tripwire site passphrase
  debconf:
    name: tripwire
    question: tripwire/site-passphrase
    value: "{{ site_passphrase }}"
    vtype: password
  no_log: True

Status

Red Hat Support

More information about Red Hat’s support of this module is available from this Red Hat Knowledge Base article.

Authors

  • Brian Coca (@bcoca)

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