In article <80Uod.1084$i6.770@news.itd.umich.edu>,
Madhusudan Singh <spammers-go-here@spam.invalid> wrote:

>1. If mysql were removed, why would old settings still stay on, and why
>would they be needed at all for a new installation ?

Could it be that you didn't remove /etc/init.d/mysql? And that one file
was sufficient to fool the installer into thinking that it didn't need
to install any configuration files at all?