Re: deb/rpm package purge

["Laszlo Boszormenyi (GCS)" <gcs@debian.hu>]

On Tue, 2013-03-19 at 15:29 -0700, Sage Weil wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, Laszlo Boszormenyi (GCS) wrote:
> >  In short, if user asks to purge the package, then the keys have to be
> > removed as well. If someone thinks about a reinstallation, s/he should
> > use remove instead.
> The keys aren't a problem; they are still in the mon database 
> (/var/lib/ceph/mon/...).
> 
> The real question is whether purge should remove /var/lib/ceph and 
> /var/log/ceph...
 Sorry if I was not clear and/or generic enough. Use of 'dpkg --remove'
is to remove binaries of the package, but leave other things, runtime
data (configuration, logs, database settings/users and so on) to be left
untouched.
On the other hand, 'dpkg --purge' is to remove everything the package
has installed and/or generated. This includes debconf answers as well.
With other words, purge is used to make the system totally clean of the
package. As such, if the sysadmin install the package again, all debconf
questions will be asked again and all generated files will be generated
again from scratch.

Laszlo/GCS