debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog

And lots more error messages besides.

I get this when I do, for example,

# apt-get install less

Full trace:

root@debian:~# apt-get install less
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  less
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 121kB of archives.
After this operation, 299kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ftp.us.debian.org squeeze/main less 436-1+b1 [121kB]
Fetched 121kB in 5s (20.5kB/s)      
debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed
Selecting previously deselected package less.
(Reading database ... 8862 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking less (from .../less_436-1+b1_armel.deb) ...
Setting up less (436-1+b1) ...
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (No usable dialog-like program is installed, so the dialog based frontend cannot be used. at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Dialog.pm line 75.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline
debconf: (Can't locate Term/ReadLine.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.1 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Readline.pm line 7.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype

I've installed apt-utils and libterm-readline-perl-perl, and I still get the same batch of errors (well, almost the same: now it doesn't try to fall back to Teletype).

I *think* that it wants to configure stuff, and ask me questions, but it can't, and (shockingly :-) google is no help (others have the problem, can't seem to find a fix).

SO: Any clues? THANKS!

simply install first dialog with

apt-get install dialog

jeff should add this to his script
perhaps he has it forgotten

Thanks gorgone, I'll give that a try.

EDIT: That worked! I can now install packages without complaint. Thanks again!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2010 09:24AM by yachris.

gorgone- thanks for the dialog tip; had the same problem and now it is solved. Took me a while though getting it via google.

In a debootstrap of maverick (Ubuntu 10.10) the following did it:

apt-get install whiptail

(the dialog package does not exist!).

On debian 7.2 I needed to install this pakages

dialog
aptitude install libgd2-xpm

to get the pakage "nginx" install without error