Unattended installation don't work.

[SK4ndal]

Versions

none yet.

Platform

Debian 11 on proxmox (or vagrant for development)

Expected behavior

The --unattended flag allows for automated install.

Actual behavior / bug

I still get dialog screens.

Steps to reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

curl -o pi-hole.sh install.pi-hole.net
chmod 700 pi-hole.sh
./pi-hole.sh --unattended

Additional context

I added this debug out put to the script:

23  echo $@
...
115 echo "DEBUG: before flag loop" 
...
120 echo "DEBUG: in unattended case"  
...
126 echo "DEBUG: after flag loop" 
127 echo "DEBUG: runUnatttended is: $runUnattended" 

The results are:

root@server:~# ./pihole.sh  --unattended
--unattended
DEBUG: before flag loop
DEBUG: in unattended case
DEBUG: after flag loop
DEBUG: runUnattended is: true

It seems the flag is picked up but I still get the pretty blue dialog screens.

I saw that on line 2578 the variable DEBIAN_FRONTEND is set but never used again.

The dialog screen is started right after on line 2587 without checking either DEBIAN_FRONTEND or runUnattended.

I've tried to search in the git history for changes around this but I can't find anything significant as far as I can tell.

[yubiuser]

DEBIAN_FRONTEND is exported and used by subsequent apt calls (see https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/debconf-doc/debconf.7.en.html).

Looking at the code, welcomeDialogs() is used to show the frist dialogs and only skipped in case "${useUpdateVars}" is true. This is only true for new installations when runUnattended=true and [[ -f "${setupVars}" ]].
So, does your setupVars="/etc/pihole/setupVars.conf" exist?

pi-hole/automated install/basic-install.sh

Lines 2570 to 2587 in d885e92

	# If the setup variable file exists,
	if [[ -f "${setupVars}" ]]; then
	# if it's running unattended,
	if [[ "${runUnattended}" == true ]]; then
	printf " %b Performing unattended setup, no dialogs will be displayed\\n" "${INFO}"
	# Use the setup variables
	useUpdateVars=true
	# also disable debconf-apt-progress dialogs
	export DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive"
	else
	# If running attended, show the available options (repair/reconfigure)
	update_dialogs
	fi
	fi
	if [[ "${useUpdateVars}" == false ]]; then
	# Display welcome dialogs
	welcomeDialogs

[SK4ndal]

Hey great! Thanks for the help. I missed that part. Are the variables in the setupVars.conf the same as the env vars described in the docker container ?

Now that I know what to google I can find other people finding similar questions.
Can I perhaps assist the project by adding the unattended setup to the documentation as I go along and use this? This might prevent future questions. Or is the lack of documentation by design?

[yubiuser]

Are the variables in the setupVars.conf the same as the env vars described in the docker container ?

I think yes (without having checked all of them - some might be docker-specific)

The ones the installer will set are those (+ WEBPASSWORD)

pi-hole/automated install/basic-install.sh

Lines 1834 to 1847 in d885e92

	finalExports() {
	# set or update the variables in the file
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "PIHOLE_INTERFACE" "${PIHOLE_INTERFACE}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "PIHOLE_DNS_1" "${PIHOLE_DNS_1}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "PIHOLE_DNS_2" "${PIHOLE_DNS_2}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "QUERY_LOGGING" "${QUERY_LOGGING}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "INSTALL_WEB_SERVER" "${INSTALL_WEB_SERVER}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "INSTALL_WEB_INTERFACE" "${INSTALL_WEB_INTERFACE}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "LIGHTTPD_ENABLED" "${LIGHTTPD_ENABLED}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "CACHE_SIZE" "${CACHE_SIZE}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "DNS_FQDN_REQUIRED" "${DNS_FQDN_REQUIRED:-true}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "DNS_BOGUS_PRIV" "${DNS_BOGUS_PRIV:-true}"
	addOrEditKeyValPair "${setupVars}" "DNSMASQ_LISTENING" "${DNSMASQ_LISTENING:-local}"

---

Or is the lack of documentation by design?

It never is. It's a lack of awareness or a lack of motivation.

__

Can I perhaps assist the project by adding the unattended setup to the documentation as I go along and use this?

Please do so. All documentation changes are made at https://github.com/pi-hole/docs which are served at https://docs.pi-hole.net/