A user, AstonJ, wanted to delete and start again with their Discourse installation after a mismatch in versions. Despite trying to remove the /var/discourse directory, the data persisted. gerhard suggested stopping the app, removing /var/discourse/shared/standalone, and rebuilding the app, which worked. AstonJ was confused as to why simply removing the /var/discourse directory didn’t work. fantasticfears pointed out that the command should be rm -r /var/discourse/shared/standalone, not rm- rf /var/discourse, due to incorrect positioning of the dash.
I’ve moved to a new server and there was a miss-match in the Discourse versions (old install was saying it was up-to-date, new server install is a different version) and now I just want to delete everything and start from scratch (I have updated Discourse on the old server via git pull and taken a new backup).
I’ve tried removing the /var/discourse directory and installing again but all the data is still present.
How do I remove everything and start from scratch again?
This should delete the database and recreate the Docker container.
./launcher stop app
rm -r /var/discourse/shared/standalone
./launcher rebuild app
Thanks that worked 
But wonder why rm- rf /var/discourse and starting all over again didn’t work - any ideas?
rm -r /var/discourse/shared/standalone
not rm- rf /var/discourse
Pay attention to the position of dash.
That was a typo here not on the server - it would report ‘command not found’.