debops.dpkg_cleanup

The debops.dpkg_cleanup Ansible role is a "helper role", meant to be used by other roles via the import_role Ansible module, or through a playbook.

The role helps prepare the host to clean up and revert certain files and directories when a specific Debian/Ubuntu package is removed or purged from the system. This ensures that customizations done by other Ansible roles are correctly reverted and removed when a different role replaces a given functionality with a different service - for example a webserver is switched from nginx to apache2, an NTP server is changed, and the like. This way roles that manage the same service don't necessarily have to include code that takes care of removing parts of alternative services.

The role functions by adding a dpkg pre-invoke hook to execute a custom Bash script when a Debian package is removed or purged. The script checks if a specific package is being removed/purged and before that happens, it executes various commands that can:

  • revert files diverted by the dpkg-divert(1) command,
  • remove files or directories not covered by the deb-prerm(5) maintainer script included in the package,
  • reload or restart systemd services.

This helps bring back the system to a state where dpkg can cleanly remove or purge the package.