See [http://debathena.mit.edu/config-package-dev/] A brief discussion of the debconf-hack feature: Primarily developed for zephyr-config to workaround the bug where you choose to use Hesiod (or have DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive), it pulls in an unconfigured Hesiod, tries to restart zhm, which can't contact any zephyr servers, and exits non-zero, so the postinst fails. {{{ $ cat debathena-zephyr-config.debconf-hack zephyr-clients zephyr-clients/read_conf boolean true zephyr-clients zephyr-clients/need-servers note zephyr-clients zephyr-clients/servers string z1.mit.edu z2.mit.edu }}} This snippet is added the the postinst, postrm {{{ debconf_get () { perl -MDebconf::Db -MDebconf::Question -e ' Debconf::Db->load(readonly => "true"); for $label (@ARGV) { if ($q = Debconf::Question->get($label)) { print $q->owners."\t".$q->name."\t".$q->type."\t".$q->value."\t".$q->flag("seen")."\n"; } else { print "\t$label\t\t\tfalse\n"; } }' -- "$@" } debconf_set () { perl -MDebconf::Db -MDebconf::Template -MDebconf::Question -e ' Debconf::Db->load; while (<>) { chomp; ($owners, $label, $type, $value, $seen) = split("\t"); @o{split(", ", $owners)} = (); unless ($t = Debconf::Template->get($label)) { next unless ($owners); $t = Debconf::Template->new($label, $owners[0], $type); $t->description("Dummy template"); $t->extended_description("This is a fake template used to pre-seed the debconf database. If you are seeing this, something is probably wrong."); } @to{split(", ", $t->owners)} = (); map { $t->addowner($_) unless exists $to{$_}; } keys %o; map { $t->removeowner($_) unless exists $o{$_}; } keys %to; next unless ($q = Debconf::Question->get($label)); $q->value($value); $q->flag("seen", $seen); @qo{split(", ", $q->owners)} = (); map { $q->addowner($_) unless exists $qo{$_}; } keys %o; map { $q->removeowner($_) unless exists $o{$_}; } keys %qo; } Debconf::Db->save;' } }}} And then the postinst and postrm have: {{{ if [ -f /var/cache/debathena-zephyr-config.debconf-save ]; then debconf_set /var/cache/debathena-zephyr-config.debconf-save debconf_set <