yum equivalent of “apt-get purge”

Question

I want to reinstall a package on CentOS and start from scratch. In Debian, I can do a apt-get purge foo and it'll remove all config files for foo. yum remove foo doesn't remove the config files. Is there any way to do apt-get purge foo using yum?

Answer 1

Do

yum remove package
yum install package

on command line. If there is any config file which is not replaced during installation then message will be printed on screen that the file has been saved with different name. Move new file to old file.

This is hoping there are very less configuration files of package which you are trying to re-install.

Answer 2

Not terribly elegant, but it works:

for package in package1 package2 package3
do
  echo "removing config files for $package"
  for file in $(rpm -q --configfiles $package)
  do
    echo "  removing $file"
    rm -f $file
  done
  rpm -e $package
done