How to uninstall and remove Apache2 on Ubuntu or Debian

Last updated on October 24, 2020 by Dan Nanni

It turns out that uninstalling Apache2 web server is not as straightforward as installing it. You will need to remove Apache2 package itself, as well as other dependent packages and its associated configurations. Here is how you remove Apache2 cleanly on Ubuntu and Debian.

The first step is to stop any running instance of Apache2, because Apache2 will not be properly removed while it is running.

$ sudo service apache2 stop

Then uninstall Apache2 and its dependent packages. Use purge option instead of remove option with apt-get command. The former option will remove dependent packages, as well as any configuration files created by them. In addition, use autoremove option as well, to remove any other dependencies that were installed with Apache2, but are no longer used by any other package.

$ sudo apt-get purge apache2 apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2-common
$ sudo apt-get autoremove

Finally, check if there is any configuration files or manual pages belonging to Apache2, which are still not removed.

$ whereis apache2

apache2: /etc/apache2

In this example, /etc/apache2 directory still exists. Since this directory (as well as any configuration files in it) is no longer necessary, go ahead and remove it manually.

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