salt: State pkg.purged doesn't purge packages on at least Debian 8 to 11

Description of Issue/Question

State pkg.purged doesn’t purge packages on at least Debian 8 and 9

Steps to Reproduce Issue

/srv/salt# cat purge.sls 
---
purge exim:
  pkg.purged:
    - pkgs:
      - exim4
      - exim4-base
      - exim4-config

exim4-daemon-light:
  pkg.purged
/srv/salt# salt-call state.apply purge
local:
----------
          ID: purge exim
    Function: pkg.purged
      Result: True
     Comment: All specified packages are already absent
     Started: 11:24:27.199039
    Duration: 323.465 ms
     Changes:   
----------
          ID: exim4-daemon-light
    Function: pkg.purged
      Result: True
     Comment: All specified packages are already absent
     Started: 11:24:27.526847
    Duration: 8.509 ms
     Changes:   

Summary for local
------------
Succeeded: 2
Failed:    0
------------
Total states run:     2
Total run time: 331.974 ms
/srv/salt# dpkg -l|grep exim
rc  exim4                                     4.89-2+deb9u1                        all          metapackage to ease Exim MTA (v4) installation
rc  exim4-base                                4.89-2+deb9u1                        amd64        support files for all Exim MTA (v4) packages
rc  exim4-config                              4.89-2+deb9u1                        all          configuration for the Exim MTA (v4)
rc  exim4-daemon-light                        4.89-2+deb9u1                        amd64        lightweight Exim MTA (v4) daemon

Versions Report

/srv/salt# salt-call --versions-report
Salt Version:
           Salt: 2016.11.6
 
Dependency Versions:
           cffi: Not Installed
       cherrypy: Not Installed
       dateutil: 2.5.3
      docker-py: Not Installed
          gitdb: 2.0.0
      gitpython: 2.1.1
          ioflo: Not Installed
         Jinja2: 2.9.4
        libgit2: Not Installed
        libnacl: Not Installed
       M2Crypto: Not Installed
           Mako: Not Installed
   msgpack-pure: Not Installed
 msgpack-python: 0.4.8
   mysql-python: 1.3.7
      pycparser: Not Installed
       pycrypto: 2.6.1
   pycryptodome: Not Installed
         pygit2: Not Installed
         Python: 2.7.13 (default, Jan 19 2017, 14:48:08)
   python-gnupg: Not Installed
         PyYAML: 3.12
          PyZMQ: 16.0.2
           RAET: Not Installed
          smmap: 2.0.1
        timelib: Not Installed
        Tornado: 4.4.3
            ZMQ: 4.2.1
 
System Versions:
           dist: debian 9.0 
        machine: x86_64
        release: 4.9.0-3-amd64
         system: Linux
        version: debian 9.0

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Comments: 27 (11 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@tkae Well from https://github.com/saltstack/salt/pull/5503 and its associated https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/4972, looks like functionality was broken long ago circa 2016.11 or before, probably in the transition from apt.py module to aptpkg.py, which is very long ago.

This will take some time to wade through to see the breakage, will re-open Have to check if the removal of this functionality was intentional or not, which is problematic given the age of the issue, Salt version. 2016.11.6

dmurphy18 on Jan 5, 2023