apt-get doesn't delete\create directory in /etc

Question

I don't understand if it's a bug or I don't know something.

I installed, for example mysql-server package with:

apt-get install mysql-server

It installs and works well. Then I try to delete it and it's configs:

apt-get purge mysql-server

As I understand from the manuals, purge delete all package's configs, but directory /etc/mysql is still there. I then deleted it manually:

rm -r /etc/mysql

But when I tried to install the package again, it doesn't create dir in /etc and of course the package doesn't work. It happens not only with MySQL, but with numerous other packages, including Apache vim.

What should I do?

This is on Debian 7 "wheezy".

Answer 1

You need to make sure that you are purging the package which actually contains the config files. For example, /etc/mysql/my.cnf is not owned by the mysql-server package, but is owned by the mysql-common package. You can see this by running dpkg -S /etc/mysql or dpkg -S /etc/mysql/my.cnf. For apache2, its the apache2.2-common package which owns most of the config.

apt-file is a handy utility you can install to search for this kind of thing as well. After apt-file update, apt-file search /etc/mysql should help figure out what package you need to reinstall.

Also note that you don't necessarily have to purge a package to replace missing config, there is a dpkg options --force-confmiss to replace missing config and --force-confnew to replace existing config, so you could probably fox your mysql problem with apt-get -o DPkg::options::=--force-confmiss install --reinstall mysql-common