On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 12:18:33AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On a separate but related topic, I think a much better approach would > be to handle configuration as a step entirely separate from the > install phase. Let the install be entirely quiet, and let packages > have intelligent defaults. If the package absolutely must be > configured before it can be used, then let it be non-functional until > someone actually calls dpkg-configure (which would be just like > dpkg-reconfigure except that's the only time the questions would be > asked). > > - Ted
Hear, hear. There is the related trouble that the only way to disable most packages is to uninstall them. Sometimes, it is desirable to temporarily disable a service without removing the binaries or changing the executability of the init.d script.