Nginx Can't Purge On Ubuntu 16.04

Question

i want to reinstall nginx and i get this error when purge or install.

sudo service nginx start
Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with 
error code. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
alson@Alson:~$ sudo apt purge nginx
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
nginx*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 37,9 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 197124 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing nginx (1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) ...
Setting up nginx-core (1.10.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.2) ...
Job for nginx.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status nginx.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript nginx, action "start" failed.
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Jum 2017-09-22 10:32:36 WIB; 12ms ago
Process: 13157 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 2996 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson systemd[1]: Starting A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server...
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson nginx[13157]: nginx: [emerg] open() "/etc/nginx/nginx.conf" failed (2: No such file or directory)
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson nginx[13157]: nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson systemd[1]: nginx.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson systemd[1]: Failed to start A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server.
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson systemd[1]: nginx.service: Unit entered failed state.
Sep 22 10:32:36 Alson systemd[1]: nginx.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
dpkg: error processing package nginx-core (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
nginx-core
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Answer 1

You seem to have unconfigured packages (2 not fully installed or removed.).

So you should deal with those first by doing sudo apt install -f. Afterwards you can retry to purge (sudo apt purge nginx). Depending on your situation, I would recommend to remove nginx sub-components using sudo apt autoremove --purge to purge leftover nginx dependencies to have a clean reinstall.

If all of that works out, you can reinstall nginx (sudo apt install nginx).

Edit:

Since the problem can't be resolved this way and the problem is caused by nginx-core you can try to manually fix the problem by doing:

sudo apt -f remove nginx-core

This tells apt to fix the problem using your provided instruction, which is to just remove nginx-core.

Edit 2:

Since the last failing package is nginx-full (see line 29 in your log) you have to remove that as well.

To do so: sudo apt -f remove nginx-full

Work through through the steps above afterwards, starting with sudo apt autoremove --purge.