Ubuntu: Silent install of mssql-tools and unixodbc-dev (automatically accept EULA)

Question

I was trying to install mssql-tools (for sqlcmd and bcp) using apt-get install as part of a Dockerfile, but the preinst script kept halting and prompting to accept the EULA.

Is there a way to automatically accept the license for this package?

Answer 1

Turns out you can set ACCEPT_EULA=Y in the environment prior to the install command:

ACCEPT_EULA=y DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends mssql-tools unixodbc-dev

I discovered this by downloading the package .deb file, untarring it and looking at the preinst script which had this block:

check_eula_acceptance()
{
    if [ "$ACCEPT_EULA" != "y" ] && [ "$ACCEPT_EULA" != "Y" ]; then
...