(debian-policy.info)Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts

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6.3 Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts
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Maintainer scripts are not guaranteed to run with a controlling terminal
and may not be able to interact with the user.  They must be able to
fall back to noninteractive behavior if no controlling terminal is
available.  Maintainer scripts that prompt via a program conforming to
the Debian Configuration Management Specification (see Note: Prompting
in maintainer scripts.) may assume that program will handle falling
back to noninteractive behavior.

For high-priority prompts without a reasonable default answer,
maintainer scripts may abort if there is no controlling terminal.
However, this situation should be avoided if at all possible, since it
prevents automated or unattended installs.  In most cases, users will
consider this to be a bug in the package.