[warning] debconf: delaying package configuration

[FranklinYu]

I receive this warning

debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed

whenever I upgrade or install any package. It does not stop any action; I didn't find any issue caused by this warning.

It seems that sometimes apt-utils is required to install itself?

[hyperknot]

I can only confirm this issue. apt-utils is a Priority: important package, should be installed by default.

[yosifkit]

The set of installed packages is controlled by Canonical in the tar files they generate for the "minimal set of packages that can be called Ubuntu": https://partner-images.canonical.com/core/ and we only add a few tweaks to make the docker images nicer.

[hyperknot]

Is there a way to contact them / open a ticket about why is this missing from partner-images?

[tianon]

Is there any harm (barring the warning) caused by not having this package installed? I think there might be a general "Ubuntu" bug tracker on launchpad, but I'm not sure.

http://serverfault.com/a/358950 implies that it only matters for interactive installations (ie, the installer needs to format a prompt template for display to the user), so it seems like it's really not necessary for the majority of Docker users (who install applications via a Dockerfile, and thus non-interactively).

[FranklinYu]

Is there any harm (barring the warning) caused by not having this package installed?

No, it has not yet stopped anything from running. Just a warning, and nothing else.

it only matters for interactive installations

I read the answer before, but I did not know that "questions about how to be configured" is just a confirmation with size information provided (since I did not found any good online explanation for it). If that is the case, we need to open a ticket to tell Canonical to suppress the warning when apt-get is called with option --assume-yes.

I Googled for the Ubuntu bug tracker, and I found this guide. I think this bug belongs to the section Reporting non-crash hardware and desktop application bugs, but it suggests to report the bug with ubuntu-bug, which is (as expected) not installed in the minimal Ubuntu image; I get stuck here.

sum up

Currently best workaround is

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install --assume-yes apt-utils

which gives a single line of warning

debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed

After that, all the new installations will be free of those warnings.

[tianon]

Thanks for the excellent summary! Closing, since this isn't a bug (and causes no visible harm). 👍