How to completely uninstall a package (including all extra files that came with it) using yum (or rpm)?

Question

When I do yum remove, it sometimes keeps a package's configuration files.

Is there anyway to remove a package completely, without keeping any file that belonged to the package?

I am running CentOS.

Solution 1

Check the Deleting packages with yum section in the HOW TO

There says:

In any event, the command syntax for package removal is:

   # yum remove package1 [package2 package3...]

As noted above, it removes package1 and all packages in the dependency tree that depend on package1, possibly irreversibly as far as configuration data is concerned.

As a quick way you can try:

yum remove package
yum install package

Also here is an interesting for. And the question can help you.

The one that keeps configs in a backup is rpm -e

What you can do is find out what is in a rpm using:

 rpm -ql packagename

or

rpm -qlp packagename if the package is not yet installed.

then, you can manually make the modifications you want.

Hope this helps!

Solution 2

rpm -e xxx.rpm && rpm -ivh --replacefiles xxx.rpm

This in effect replaces the old configs kept after "erasing" Must be a way to do this with yum and dnf

Solution 3

With root privileges, use

yum remove -y vsftpd

Comments

[Anthony Bonney]

Can you provide an example of configuration files are left after yum remove?

[Howard]

~/.mozilla left by firefox, for example

[TusharG]

@ZaSter : When I removed quagga package it kept all its config files in /etc/quagga (Files like zebra.conf, ospfd.conf, bgpd.conf) which should have been removed along with package itself. If it is by design to keep them, then please provide a command that will also remove the configuration files.

[Howard]

I guess it is probably impossible to remove all files that ever came with a package... but still your recommendation is helpful.

[Tim Snow]

doesn't work on RHEL7. /etc/sysconfig/<package> file is still there.