TERM not set -- how can I fix this, or does it matter?

[Silent Observer]

I'm getting the following message during updates on 16.04 64-bit (up to date, as far as I know, using Synaptic, if that matters):

debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (TERM is not set, so the dialog frontend is not usable.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline

I presume there's a way to set my system's TERM so the dialog frontend becomes usable?

[Snowhog]

This may not completely address/answer your question, but...
http://askubuntu.com/questions/50615...when-using-ssh

[jlittle]

... during updates ...

How are you running updates?

The "dialog frontend" using readline just means typing a response (say, "y") rather than, say, tabbing to an "ok" and pressing enter.

To answer your question, I suppose you could put

export TERM=xterm

in your ~/.profile. For a while KDE (or sddm or whatever) wasn't running this before starting but the last time I checked it was being run so that all processes in the GUI inherit settings there.

[Silent Observer]

This is occurring while updating using synaptic, which I installed after installing 16.04 because I'm comfortable with it (and it works better for me than the built-in installer/updater suite).

[GreyGeek]

Just a wild guess but ...
Is kdialog installed?

[Silent Observer]

Just a wild guess but ...
Is kdialog installed?

Unless it's part of a clean install of 16.04 or was added in an update since May, no. I'll see if I installing it changes anything.

Okay, rebooted to 16.04, I don't find any package called kdialog, installed or not. I do have one called just dialog, which is installed. I have just installed debconf-kde-helper, which I suspect does what's needed. Let me install something else and see if I get the same complaint...

Yes, identical message appears a couple times when installing updates. It also appeared while installing debconf-kde-helper.