On Mon, 6 Aug 2012, Jason White wrote:
Hiddensoul (Mark Clohesy) <hiddensoul@twistedsouls.com> wrote:
Dont know if this is what you need but maybe an apt-get purge <package> will give you a fresh starting point
Indeed it should.
Configuration files are not removed by a remove command; you need to use purge instead, and I strongly suspect --reinstall performs a "remove" rather than a "purge".
Which is a pain in the arse, because sometimes you just want to reinstall the default package version of a config file, and don't care to lose the other half dozen customised files from that package that would also be removed by a purge. Apt/dpkg also has some pretty stupid handling regarding obsolete conffiles. dpkg -s shows a file in /etc/ as obsolete, so remove the conf file, and dpkg -s still shows that file as obsolete even though it no longer exists! Er, and I had other beefs with it, but I can't remember what they were. Carry on. (maybe that it won't install a new renamed version of that conffile even with a --reinstall, so then you have to purge and start again. Some corner case, anyway). -- Tim Connors