Is there a standard way to uninstall an RPM? or would rpm -ev {package} will automatically remove ALL files. Thanks, -Kamal.

On 05/17/2012 01:48 PM, Kamal Ahmed wrote:

Is there a standard way to uninstall an RPM? or would rpm -ev {package} will automatically remove ALL files.

yes, rpm -e or yum erase are the standard mechanism to remove an RPM.

However the "ALL files" is a loaded question, one for which there has been much debate.

When rpm removes files it removes what is in the package file list. But the act of installing an rpm may create other files not in the package file list (consequences of things done in the rpm scriptlets). It's up to the spec file author to remove those during uninstall, it won't happen automatically. Not all all packages are so carefully written, but this is further compounded by the next issue

If you configure and/or run the programs in the package additional files unknown to rpm may also be created. In many instances those are data files. Just because you uninstall does that mean the data should be deleted as well? Many argue no. Consider a database, if you uninstall a database should you lose all your data? Perhaps you want to convert that data for use with a different database, etc. Thus this becomes a very package specific question and it's clear no one agrees completely.

So back to your original question. If you uninstall an rpm will *every* file be removed? Depends on the package, many won't.