How to completely reset an Apache instance in Ubuntu

While experimenting with mod_python, I ended up completely hosing my local Apache installed. I had the configuration files in a bad state, so I thought I would just drop all of /etc/apache2, remove Apache, and re-install it. But once that happened, /etc/apache2 wasn’t remade! When I tried to start or stop Apache, it spat back:

Oh right, thanks… So here’s what I did to erase Apache’s memory of my mistakes:

• Find and drop all Apache packages:

  1 2	sudo dpkg –get-selections | grep apache sudo apt-get remove –purge apache2 apache2-mpm-worker apache2-threaded-dev apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-python libapache2-mod-python-doc libapache2-mod-wsgi

• Re-install Apache:

  1	sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-python libapache2-mod-wsgi libapache2-mod-python-doc libapache2-mod-php5

After this, all the configuration files were back, and I had a default Apache install.

Thanks to author http://www.samuelhuckins.com/