Cannot uninstall MongoDB

Question

It seems that following the official MongoDB installation instructions when installing on Debian direct you to a world of pain.

First, it did not install correctly, so now I am trying to remove all installed MongoDB packages to be able to start from scratch.
But frustratingly, because it (presumably) did not install cleanly, it won't uninstall.

Originally, I installed it using these instructions.

Currently, I've managed to remove every package apart from mongodb-org-server which, just won't go.

An attempted removal results in the following:

$ sudo apt-get remove mongodb-org-server
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
mongodb-org-server
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 23.9 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 31030 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing mongodb-org-server ...
invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/mongod not found.
dpkg: error processing mongodb-org-server (--remove):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 100
invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/mongod not found.
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 100
Errors were encountered while processing:
 mongodb-org-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Any idea how I can properly and cleanly get rid of MongoDB now?

Answer 1

Try

apt-get --reinstall install mongodb

This will pretend that mongodb isn't installed already and overwrite the old files.

Afterwards you should be able to remove it like usual.

Answer 2

Just follow these commands to uninstall mongodb

sudo apt-get purge mongodb mongodb-clients mongodb-server mongodb-dev

sudo apt-get purge mongodb-10gen

sudo apt-get autoremove

Answer 3

Uninstall and remove Mongo packages.

$ sudo apt-get purge mongodb-org*

Check if related directories removed

$ sudo rm -r /var/log/mongodb
$ sudo rm -r /var/lib/mongodb

Recheck for autoremove any remaining mongo packages

$ sudo apt-get autoremove

Configure your directory

$ sudo dpkg --configure -a

Force install anything required

$ sudo apt-get install -f

Re-install from https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/

Finally restart your Ubuntu and check status of Mogodb server as you did earlier.