I'm confused by the behavior of apt-get install --reinstall. I found out yesterday that the /etc/bind/db.root file was missing on my name server. I was able to recover by linking to an old copy and restarting bind9. However, when deleted the link and performed the --reinstall command, the db.root file was not restored. I verified that the file exists in the bind9 DEB and, in fact, is listed in the bind9.list file.
My question is this. How can the reinstall fail to install the file when there is no extant file with the same name?