PKGS-7346 - Unpurged packages

This information is provided as part of the Lynis community project. It is related to Lynis control PKGS-7346 and should be considered as-is and without guarantees. Any advice and commands should be tested before implementing them in production environments.

Control details
CategorySoftware
Application

Description

While not directly a security concern, unpurged packages are not installed but still have remains left on the system (e.g. configuration files). In case software is reinstalled, an old configuration might be applied. Proper cleanups are therefore advised.

How to solve

Packages which are removed, but still have some files left on the systems, are called unpurged packages. For example, a changed configuration file might not be deleted by the package manager, to ensure you don't loose your customizations. However if you intended to remove a package fully, an additional step is needed to clean those files. This is "purging" and can be done with the dpkg command.

Command

dpkg --purge

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