In Debian packages, creating and removing users is the task of the pre-/post-scripts of the package and not the task of DPKG.
If the problem was only that /var/lib/postgresql still existed after purging the postgresql-8.4 package, I'd be completely with you, but it looks like it's a problem with the postgresql-8.4 package itself (or more precisely the postrm script).
Hello Jordon,
I beg to differ.
In Debian packages, creating and removing users is the task of the pre-/post-scripts of the package and not the task of DPKG.
If the problem was only that /var/lib/postgresql still existed after purging the postgresql-8.4 package, I'd be completely with you, but it looks like it's a problem with the postgresql-8.4 package itself (or more precisely the postrm script).