issue with purging an old kernel

["D. R. Evans" <doc.evans@gmail.com>]

Normally to remove an old kernel from my debian stable systems, I issue the 
following command:

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apt purge linux-headers-<kernel-number>-amd64 
linux-headers-<kernel-number>-common linux-image-<kernel-number>-amd64

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Following this recipe, which has always worked in the past, I issued:

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apt purge linux-headers-5.10.0-11-amd64 linux-headers-5.10.0-11-common 
linux-image-5.10.0-11-amd64

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But it failed, with the error message:

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Purging configuration files for linux-image-5.10.0-11-amd64 (5.10.92-2) ...
rmdir: failed to remove '/lib/modules/5.10.0-11-amd64': Directory not empty
dpkg: warning: while removing linux-image-5.10.0-11-amd64, directory 
'/lib/modules/5.10.0-11-amd64' not empty so not removed

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If I look in the named directory, I see:

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root@zbrew:~# ls -al /lib/modules/5.10.0-11-amd64
total 35
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 3 Jun 20 08:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 7 Jun 17 07:08 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2 Apr 25 07:53 misc

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and the directory /lib/modules/5.10.0-11-amd64/misc turns out to be empty.

So it seems reasonable to remove /lib/modules/5.10.0-11-amd64/misc/ manually 
and re-execute the purge command.

But before I try that, I'm puzzled as to how this situation could have arisen. 
Has anyone else seen this happen, and does anyone have a reasonable suggestion 
as to how it could have occurred?

  Doc

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Web:  http://enginehousebooks.com/drevans