Hi,

The text dialog boxes that appear when you do dpkg-reconfigure <package
name, or when you are resolving a config file conflict on package
update: is it possible to change their colour scheme?

It's typically a blue screen background, a grey dialog background, black
text, a red selection bar?

These days I actually find the accessibility mode high contrast colour
scheme as offered by the installer to be preferable so if I could use
that for all debconf dialogs I'd be happy.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 10:46:37PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

The text dialog boxes that appear when you do dpkg-reconfigure <package
name, or when you are resolving a config file conflict on package
update: is it possible to change their colour scheme?

It's typically a blue screen background, a grey dialog background, black text, a red selection bar?

This is probably the "whiptail" frontend to debconf. The documentation
is... not extensive, alas. I guess someone (TM) will have to look in
the sources (at the moment not me, in a hurry).
Cheers
--
tom s


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 11 Feb 2026, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

The text dialog boxes that appear when you do dpkg-reconfigure <package
name, or when you are resolving a config file conflict on package
update: is it possible to change their colour scheme?

I think this is a great idea.

It's typically a blue screen background, a grey dialog background, black text, a red selection bar\u2026

I am wincing in pain. Literally hissing.

These days I actually find the accessibility mode high contrast colour
scheme as offered by the installer to be preferable so if I could use
that for all debconf dialogs I'd be happy.

ME TOO.
Starting from tomas's pointer to whiptail I did some poking around,
found an email discussing an ubuntu package cdebconf-newt-udeb
https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com/msg05033.html
that included a promising-sounding file:
/etc/newt/palette.dark
$ wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cdebconf/cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb
$ dpkg-deb -x cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb ./
I inspected ./etc/newt/palette.dark,
# mkdir /etc/newt/
copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane
and then tested with
# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales
which looked satisfactory to me.
So I then did
# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette
and verified that this had the desired effect with
# dpkg-reconfigure locales
And it did. I now have the dark theme by default.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, Davidson wrote:

$ wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cdebconf/cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb
$ dpkg-deb -x cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb ./

I inspected ./etc/newt/palette.dark,

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

It now occurs to me that this hard linking could bite me later, if
anything clobbers

/etc/newt/palette

because palatte.dark, which is data I do not want to lose, would get
clobbered too. So I have done

# ln -Tvsf /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

to make palette a soft link instead.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, Davidson wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, Davidson wrote:

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

It now occurs to me that this hard linking could bite me later, if
anything clobbers

/etc/newt/palette

because palatte.dark, which is data I do not want to lose, would get clobbered too. So I have done

# ln -Tvsf /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

to make palette a soft link instead.

LOL. A soft link suffers from the same problem as the hard link.

# rm /etc/newt/palette
# cp -a /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 10:30:30PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, Davidson wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, Davidson wrote:

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

It now occurs to me that this hard linking could bite me later, if
anything clobbers

/etc/newt/palette

because palatte.dark, which is data I do not want to lose, would get clobbered too. So I have done

# ln -Tvsf /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

to make palette a soft link instead.

LOL. A soft link suffers from the same problem as the hard link.

# rm /etc/newt/palette
# cp -a /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

Aha! So newt it is. Doing a "strings /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnewt.so.0.52 | less"
yields, among lots of other stuff, this:
white
/etc/newt/palette
NEWT_COLORS_FILE
NEWT_COLORS
LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LANG
...so perhaps you can point at another palette file with the environment variable NEWT_COLORS_FILE or even (gasp! :) stuff colours directly into NET_COLORS...
Cheers & thanks for investigating
--
tom s


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 at 07:39, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

...so perhaps you can point at another palette file with the environment variable NEWT_COLORS_FILE or even (gasp! :) stuff colours directly into NET_COLORS...

Hi, the newt C code at [1] appears to do that.

Found using Debian codesearch tool [2].

[1] https://sources.debian.org/src/newt/0.52.25-1/newt.c?hl=782#L782
[2] https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=NEWT_COLORS_FILE&literal=1

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 03:48:10PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

$ wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cdebconf/cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb
$ dpkg-deb -x cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb ./

[?]

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

Excellent work, thanks!

I suspect that palette.dark does exist somewhere in Debian as the high
contrast text installer seems to use the same colour scheme and
interface, but this is great for now.

If you do not beat me to it then I will write this up on the Debian wiki
at some point as this was too hard to find and seems like it might be
useful for more people.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 13 Feb 2026, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 03:48:10PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

$ wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cdebconf/cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb
$ dpkg-deb -x cdebconf-newt-udeb_0.251ubuntu1_amd64.udeb ./

[\u2026]

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

Excellent work, thanks!

My pleasure. Thanks to yourself for the idea.

I suspect that palette.dark does exist somewhere in Debian as the
high contrast text installer seems to use the same colour scheme and interface, but this is great for now.

Cool.

If you do not beat me to it

Very unlikely, for the wiki is dark and full of horrors.

then I will write this up on the Debian wiki at some point as this
was too hard to find and seems like it might be useful for more
people.

I thank you for your service.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 03:48:10PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

I inspected ./etc/newt/palette.dark,

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

and verified that this had the desired effect with

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

And it did. I now have the dark theme by default.

Strangely, on my Debian 13 hosts this isn't taking effect unless I set NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette. On Debian 12 and below, just putting
the file at /etc/newt/palette seems to be enough.

I haven't yet worked out if this is some difference in how my Debian 13
hosts are configured, or a bug.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, Feb 16, 2026 at 06:20:25PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 03:48:10PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

I inspected ./etc/newt/palette.dark,

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner from
the downloading user to root:root, checked that its permissions were
sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

and verified that this had the desired effect with

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

And it did. I now have the dark theme by default.

Strangely, on my Debian 13 hosts this isn't taking effect unless I set NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette. On Debian 12 and below, just putting
the file at /etc/newt/palette seems to be enough.

I haven't yet worked out if this is some difference in how my Debian 13
hosts are configured, or a bug.

Poking at the sources, it seems to be a configure-time option, so perhaps there's some change in debian/rules or some such?
Cheers
--
t


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 16 Feb 2026, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 03:48:10PM -0500, Davidson wrote:

I inspected ./etc/newt/palette.dark,

# mkdir /etc/newt/

copied ./etc/newt/palette.dark to /etc/newt/, changed its owner
from the downloading user to root:root, checked that its
permissions were sane

and then tested with

# NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette.dark dpkg-reconfigure locales

which looked satisfactory to me.

So I then did

# ln -Tv /etc/newt/palette.dark /etc/newt/palette

and verified that this had the desired effect with

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

And it did. I now have the dark theme by default.

Strangely, on my Debian 13 hosts this isn't taking effect unless I
set NEWT_COLORS_FILE=/etc/newt/palette. On Debian 12 and below, just
putting the file at /etc/newt/palette seems to be enough.

I haven't yet worked out if this is some difference in how my Debian
13 hosts are configured, or a bug.

My experiments were performed on debian 12.

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.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, Feb 16, 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.

It's part of the core installation package set.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)