I have a need to run dpkg install, unpack the conf files, but skip running the postinst scripts (if it's included in the deb file).
I've tried to change the SHELL variable to /usr/bin/true, but that didn't work. Any other ideas would be great!
According to its man-page dpkg doesn't have a command-line-option to disable script execution. However, you can achieve what you want with the following commands (taken from this answer from an ubuntu forum):
apt-get download <package> sudo dpkg --unpack <package>*.deb sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.postinst -f sudo dpkg --configure <package> sudo apt-get install -yf #To fix dependencies 
dpkg command line options to achieve not running postinit scripts
/bin/sha symlink to/usr/bin/true. But be careful to not lock yourself out of your system!apt-get installwithout running anypostinitscripts, if included. Basically, i have a bunch of packages (built for a different architecture) that i want to install. they won't run on the system that I'm installing them on (different arch issues, etc) so I want to skip running any postinit scripts