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Accepted
Nick Bolton
Asked: 2010-02-10 15:49:54 +0800 CST

How do I completely remove mysql-server on Debian?

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I figured I'd share my question here and then answer, as there seems to be many people stuck in my position - but no definitive answer. The problem is, if you apt-get remove mysql-server, it does not clean up the configuration and database files, so if you've somehow screwed them up, then installing again, will not replace them. So there seems to be many people asking "how do I completely remove mysql-server, so that I can re-install a fresh?" -- everyone answers with apt-get remove --purge mysql-server -- I'm not sure why, but this does not fully uninstall. My answer follows...

mysql debian

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    removing mysql-server does not work because mysql-server is just a metapackage that depends on the specific server version

    apt-get remove --purge 'mysql-.*'

    or

    apt-get remove --purge 'mysql-server.*'

    will do the trick.

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  2. This worked for me (I'd also tried installing v5.0, but this made matters worse):

    apt-get remove --purge mysql-server-5.0 mysql-common mysql-client-5.0 \
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server mysql-client

apt-get install mysql-server

    I think the key here is removing mysql-common -- but I'm not sure. Please try this and leave your comments.

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  3. I had some problems with that. Even after removing all the server packages, there are some config files installed by mysql-common, which is a dependency of libmysqlclient.

    Try using dpkg -S /etc/mysql to see which packages are installing those files.

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  4. You can also use dpkg -P to achieve this

    From the dpkg man page

     -P or --purge removes everything, including configuration files.
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