Documentation< Previous | Contents | Next >
It is possible to use preseeding to change the default answer for a question, but still have the question asked. To do this the seen flag must be reset to “false” after setting the value for a question.
d-i foo/bar string value d-i foo/bar seen false
The same effect can be achieved for all questions by setting the parameter preseed/interactive=true at the boot prompt. This can also be useful for testing or debugging your preconfiguration file.
Note that the “d-i” owner should only be used for variables used in the installer itself. For variables belonging to packages installed on the target system, you should use the name of that package instead. See the footnote to Section B.2.2.
If you are preseeding using boot parameters, you can make the installer ask the corresponding question by using the “?=” operator, i.e. foo/bar?=value (or owner:foo/bar?=value). This will of course only have effect for parameters that correspond to questions that are actually displayed during an installation and not for “internal” parameters.
For more debugging information, use the boot parameter DEBCONF_DEBUG=5. This will cause debconf to print much more detail about the current settings of each variable and about its progress through each package’s installation scripts.