So: Do you have any preference about the way you would like to fix this?
One way is to go back to the old behaviour, but maybe it's not necessary if you want to keep using the conffile mechanism. Maybe this would also work: In preinst, do something like this: if upgrading-from-previous-version-whatever-is-coded if [ ! -f /etc/logcheck/header.txt ]; then touch /etc/logcheck.header.was.removed.txt fi fi Then in postinst, do something like this: if [ -f /etc/logcheck.header.was.removed.txt ] rm -f /etc/logcheck/header.txt rm -f /etc/logcheck.header.was.removed.txt fi Completely untested, just an idea. Thanks.