How to completely remove an application as well as the configuration files?

[Steve Lamb]

On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 07:30:53PM -0400, Jason Wilson wrote:
> How this happened, I'm not quite sure. I don't *think* Linux installs more 
> than one installation of a program, in the way that Windows does. However, 
> I also don't understand why apt-get --purge didn't completely remove 
> everything, including configuration files and others. Can somebody 
> enlighten us as to how/why this happened?

    Without some C&P from the OP, probably not.  However there is one case
where apt will not purge configuration files; that is the case of custom
configuration.  Additional files that the package manager does not know about
will never be purged.  It only purges what it knows about.  In the case of the
way apache2 is configured there are quite a few files the user adds to get
things up and running.

    Hmmmm, just a thought, since all of this was done with apt and apt is
pathetic when it comes to removing packages which were automatically installed
try doing a purge on apache2.2-common.  I can't find a listing of its files
online at the moment nor do I want to install it just to find out.  But I'm
willing to bet that the configuration and init.d script are contained in
-common instead of one of the packages that install the binary.

    Also, if this works, switch to aptitude so in the future when stuff is
added automagically and you remove the only dependancy it goes away as well.
;)

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | But who can decide what they dream
       PGP Key: 1FC01004       |      and dream I do
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