[Debconf-devel] Bug#511726: finally purged debconf items with no owners

[jidanni at jidanni.org]

I have finally figured out how to remove the items with no owners from
the debconf database.

It took the fancy Makefile below, created by reverse engineering the
extremely complicated debconf system as far as I was able.

The big problem is that it is an extreme mystery how to do just
# debconf-whatever --purge whatever
If anybody knows the answer, please say it.

Anyway, here's the Makefile
purge:/tmp/base_purge bad_owners
	set -xe; for i in `cat bad_owners`; do j=/tmp/$$i.postrm; ln $< $$j;\
	$$j; done
bad_owners:owners good_owners
	comm -3 $? > $@
owners:/var/cache/debconf/config.dat
	debconf-show --listowners|sort -u > $@
good_owners:owners
	dpkg -l $$(cat $?)|perl -alnwe 'print $$F[1] if /^.[ic]/' > $@
/tmp/base_purge:
	echo . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule \&\& db_purge > $@ && chmod +x $@

By the way, just for the record below are the offending packages that
left their configurations upon purge. I do not know if their current
versions do the same. Nor do I know if piuparts detects such things.

abiword-common alsa-base alsa-modules-2.4.18-k7 alsa-modules-2.4.19-k7
ash cpufreqd docbook-dsssl dpkg-www efax ftpd gnus htdig jpilot kdrill
language-env libdvdread3 libpaper-utils libpaperg libpq3 libsensors3
links-ssl linux-image-2.6.16-1-686 php5-gd php5-mysql
postgresql-client spamassassin ssh tetex-base tetex-bin txt2pdbdoc
x86info xfree86-common xplanet