On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 01:36:10PM +0000, aces and eights wrote: > after failing to get my roundcube dovecot installations to work again, as a > last resort I apt removed dovecot and also /etc/dovecot. > Thinking "that's OK apt will put them back." > except > "Not replacing deleted config file /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-managesieve.conf" > for all the conf files which is not very helpful. > Is there a way to persuade apt to put the config files back ?
This is an intentional feature. If you delete a config file, the package manager assumes you had a good reason for this, and that you want it to stay deleted, so upgrading a package will not install a new version of the config file. If you WANT a new/default config file to be installed, the most obvious way is to purge (not just remove) the package, and then reinstall it. If that's too heavy-handed, the next most obvious way is: 1) Get the .deb file with "apt-get --reinstall install pkgname" (you might also add the --download-only option). This places the .deb file in /var/cache/apt/archives/. 2) dpkg --install --force-confmiss /var/cache/apt/archives/yourfile
