On Mon 16 Feb 2026 at 15:24:09 (-0500), Davidson wrote: > FWIW: From apt's logs it looks as though whiptail was installed, and > had been installed long before I began any investigation into the > topic. That is, the only hits for "whiptail" in apt/term.log* and > apt/history.log* look to me like they are from release upgrades, > despite root bash history containing a very recent attempt to install > whiptail manually, I imagine as part of this present investigation.
All my bullseye, bookworm and trixie systems (non-DE) show the same thing in /var/log/installer/syslog: whiptail is installed in the context of: debootstrap: Preparing to unpack .../udev_257.9-1~deb13u1_amd64.deb ... debootstrap: Unpacking udev (257.9-1~deb13u1) ... debootstrap: Preparing to unpack .../vim-common_2%3a9.1.1230-2_all.deb ... debootstrap: Unpacking vim-common (2:9.1.1230-2) ... debootstrap: Preparing to unpack .../vim-tiny_2%3a9.1.1230-2_amd64.deb ... debootstrap: Unpacking vim-tiny (2:9.1.1230-2) ... debootstrap: Preparing to unpack .../whiptail_0.52.25-1_amd64.deb ... debootstrap: Unpacking whiptail (0.52.25-1) ... debootstrap: Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.41-12) ... debootstrap: Processing triggers for systemd (257.9-1~deb13u1) ... debootstrap: Setting up cpio (2.15+dfsg-2) ... occurring about 40% of the way through the log, ie while installing the base system. As (required) debconf only Suggests whiptail, I guess the debian-installer itself is selecting the latter. Cheers, David.
