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authorFred Lifton <fred.lifton@docker.com>2014-08-27 09:05:02 -0700
committerFred Lifton <fred.lifton@docker.com>2014-08-27 09:05:02 -0700
commitaba575c7546ba7d2914f0c3b8b3450667b3959ac (patch)
treed0158f0eab4b9710815c1a87e2ef3699e5185205 /docs/sources/faq.md
parent4b54484843eacf6ce57d2fc16e6aacc70d964041 (diff)
parent7565cb309988345f9ed9daba87052f2bba116033 (diff)
downloaddocker-docs-1.1.tar.gz
Merge pull request #7755 from SvenDowideit/post-1.1.2-docs-update-1docs-1.1
Post 1.1.2 docs update 1
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@@ -225,6 +225,38 @@ Downloading and installing an "all-in-one" .deb or .rpm sounds great at first,
except if you have no way to figure out that it contains a copy of the
OpenSSL library vulnerable to the [Heartbleed](http://heartbleed.com/) bug.
+### Why is `DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive` discouraged in Dockerfiles?
+
+When building Docker images on Debian and Ubuntu you may have seen errors like:
+
+ unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
+
+These errors don't stop the image from being built but inform you that the
+installation process tried to open a dialog box, but was unable to.
+Generally, these errors are safe to ignore.
+
+Some people circumvent these errors by changing the `DEBIAN_FRONTEND`
+environment variable inside the Dockerfile using:
+
+ ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+
+This prevents the installer from opening dialog boxes during installation
+which stops the errors.
+
+While this may sound like a good idea, it *may* have side effects.
+The `DEBIAN_FRONTEND` environment variable will be inherited by all
+images and containers built from your image, effectively changing
+their behavior. People using those images will run into problems when
+installing software interactively, because installers will not show
+any dialog boxes.
+
+Because of this, and because setting `DEBIAN_FRONTEND` to `noninteractive` is
+mainly a 'cosmetic' change, we *discourage* changing it.
+
+If you *really* need to change its setting, make sure to change it
+back to its [default value](https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch05s03.html.en)
+afterwards.
+
### Can I help by adding some questions and answers?
Definitely! You can fork [the repo](https://github.com/dotcloud/docker) and