Update waits indefinitely for user input (on terminal/debconf/conffile prompts)

[Chris Johnson]

Updating certain "non-free" packages requires the user to affirmatively accept the licence terms. Update manager hangs indefinitely until the user accepts or declines the licence. When setting the upgrade to happen over night, the update did nothing most of the night because it wanted someone to click "next" for 8 hours.

Could it timeout upgrading a package after about 30 minutes of no user input and then leave that package to be upgraded later (when the user is probably waiting around during the upgrades)? That way, the user may even choose to not use the non-free if the new version has better support for that particular need.

Flash Plug-In was the offending package.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

What package in particular did that? How did it prompt for that input? Was it debconf (i.e. a gui window asking for confirmation)? Or did it ask on a terminal window?

Thanks,
 Michael

[Chris Johnson (ubuntu-nosnhoj)]

It was the flash-player plug-in. I forgot to write down the exact package name when it happened, but once the upgrade is finished I will find it and update the post. It was a GUI screen asking for acceptance to the licence agreement, so I suppose that was Debconf.

[Chris Johnson (ubuntu-nosnhoj)]

The flashplayer question came up very early in the process when the packages were just being prepared for installation. About 2 hours later, once the installation actually began, the gui prompted for replacing abcde.conf file while updating the abcde package. In this case, my abcde.conf needed to stay. But again, if I wasn't nearby, I would prefer it hold back the package and continue the update of everything else.

As more packages come up, I will post to this thread (unless you tell me to open separate bugs for each package).

Thanks.

[Chris Johnson (ubuntu-nosnhoj)]

/etc/qt3/qt_plugins_3.3rc also asks to be replaced. Not sure which package is causing the request, the GUI didn't specify. Replacement appeared to be trivial and this is not a file that I customized from my Breezy installation.

[Chris Johnson (ubuntu-nosnhoj)]

The package that caused the dialog was "flashplugin-nonfree" from the multiverse area. Is there a recommended non-nonfree equivalent for Edgy? I'd like to try to use the non-proprietary software, but with young kids, it's hard to live without flash.

[AJ ONeal (coolaj86)]

Also Gallery2, libssl, and a good number of other packages cause a wait for user-prompts do this. I think that it should be given higher priority. Packages should be marked that they require user input and be performed (preferrably) last (or first).

[Emmanuel Pacaud (emmanuel-pacaud)]

This issue also happen with apt-listchange, on every update.