help with DEBCONF_DB_OVERRIDE with pipe

[matpen]

I am writing a non-interactive install script on Ubuntu 11.10 that includes many "apt-get install"s and some "dpkg-reconfigure"s.
Some of the packages per default ask the user for choices via whiptail (eg. dpkg-reconfigure dash), which of course is not compatible with the "non-interactivity" goal.

So, after reading man debconf (7) and man debconf.conf (5) I tried this, which works:

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
export DEBCONF_DB_OVERRIDE='File{/tmp/config.dat}'
cat >/tmp/config.dat <<EOF
Name: dash/sh
Template: dash/sh
Value: false
Owners: dash
Flags: seen
EOF
dpkg-reconfigure dash

Since I find this code a little cumbersome, I wanted to use the "Pipe" database driver, but I can not get it to work. Here is my last attempt:

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
export DEBCONF_DB_OVERRIDE='Pipe'
cat <<EOF|dpkg-reconfigure dash
Name: dash/sh
Template: dash/sh
Value: false
Owners: dash
Flags: seen
EOF

Can anyone suggest a way to do this? Thank you in advance for any hint!

[matpen]

bump... anyone?