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Joeri Verdeyen

Web-engineer, cyclist, Nespresso lover, Strava pusher.

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Restore original package configuration files in Ubuntu

While test-driving Ansible playbooks and configuring packages, I overwrite default configurations. Sometimes I want to recover the default settings, this is a quick reminder to myself on how to do this.

Find the package

$ dpkg -S /etc/dspam/dspam.conf
dspam: /etc/dspam/dspam.conf

The package using /etc/dspam/dspam.conf is dspam.

Remove the config file you want to restore

$ sudo rm /etc/dspam/dspam.conf

Or you might want to rename it:

$ sudo mv /etc/dspam/dspam.conf /tmp/dspam.conf.bak

Restore the original configuration file(s)

$ sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" install --reinstall dspam

Configuration file `/etc/dspam/dspam.conf`, does not exist on system.
Installing new config file as you requested.

Thanks for reading

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