how to *completely* remove a package from the cmd line?

[Tyler J. Wagner]

On Tuesday 10 Aug 2010 08:39:27 Robert Holtzman wrote:
> > dpkg still sees it with a status of "rc".  if, however, i go into
> > synaptic and mark it for complete removal and apply, then it's truly
> > gone.  so what am i missing from the command line to get the same
> > effect?
> 
> It may not be as truly gone as you think. After you're done removing it
> via synaptic run "locate <package> | less". You may be as surprised as I

dpkg -P package will utterly purge it, including config files. Even if it has 
already been removed, and shows status "rc", this will remove the configs too.

Anything left after that was not installed by the package manager. It may have 
been generated by the software after installation, but it wasn't packaged or 
cleaned up by the "postrm" stage of the package.

This is normal. And whatever is left behind shouldn't affect the operation of 
the system.

Regards,
Tyler

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