As suggested in Debian Cleanup Tip #1: Get rid of useless configuration files , it's worth using grep-status to retrieve information about configuration files left behind a package removal or upgrade. For example, on my Squeeze VM: $ grep-status -n -sPackage -FStatus config-files libjack-jackd2-0 You can confirm with 'dpkg -l' that's a package in 'rc' status: $ dpkg -l | grep libjack-jackd2-0 rc libjack-jackd2-0 1.9.6~dfsg.1-2 JACK Audio Connection Kit (libraries) You may probably want to remove definitely those configuration files; just purge the package. For example: $ dpkg -P libjack-jackd2-0 See also about debian configuration files, an important assumption Debian takes .