[Debconf-devel] db_get in lenny

[Christoph Pleger]

Hello,

My name is Christoph Pleger and I am an administrator of Linux PCs at the 
Technical University Dortmund, Germany.

I have a question about the db_get routine in /usr/share/debconf/confmodule. 
The reason for my question is that I am working on an automatic installation 
of Debian GNU/Linux especially for our PCs at the university. One step of the 
automatic installation is to configure fontconfig without user interaction, 
so that fontconfig uses bitmap fonts, a native hinting type native and an 
automatic subpixel rendering type.

In Debian sarge and etch, I used two scripts that successfully fulfilled the 
task. The content of the first script was:

 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive"

. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule

db_set fontconfig/hinting_type Native
db_set fontconfig/subpixel_rendering Automatic
db_set fontconfig/enable_bitmaps true



The content of the second script was:

DEBIAN_VERSION=`cat /etc/debian_version`

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
export DEBCONF_ADMIN_EMAIL=""

if [ "${DEBIAN_VERSION}" = "3.1" ]; then
  yes '' | dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig 2>/dev/null
else
  yes '' | dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config 2>/dev/null
fi


But now, in lenny, that does not work any more. The first script still sets 
the correct values in /var/cache/debconf/config.dat. But the implicit call 
to /var/lib/dpkg/info/fontconfig-config.postinst does not work any more for 
the enable_bitmaps variable. I changed that file so that I can see the result 
of the db_get command:

db_get fontconfig/enable_bitmaps
enable_bitmaps="$RET"
echo $enable_bitmaps

That way, I found out that db_get not only returns a wrong value, but also 
sets the wrong value so that, after exection of the second script, the 
corresponding field in  /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is set to false instead 
of true (that was set in my first script).

When I call "dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config" manually and answer the 
questions, everything works fine, but I want everything to be installed 
automatically, without user interaction. Do you have an idea why my scripts 
do not work any more? Do I have to set some other values before calling 
dpkg-reconfigure? 

Regards
  Christoph Pleger