LinuxQuestions.org - Impossible to remove mysql on 16.04 - constant errors preventing system-wide upgrade

Whenever I attempt to do a distribution upgrade, it fails because Mysql throws errors which I believe makes it impossible to do a system-wide upgrade.

I am on Ubuntu 16.04.

Not matter what I do to remove, purge, delete, or otherwise get rid of a mysql system that is non-functioning and preventing me from upgrading the distribution, I constantly receive the following errors. The following commands which seems to work for other people with this problem does not work for me:

Code:

sudo apt-get purge mysql*

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get autoclean

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Code:

apt-get autoremove

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree      

Reading state information... Done

The following packages will be REMOVED:

  mysql-server-core-5.7

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 131 not upgraded.

2 not fully installed or removed.

After this operation, 46.2 MB disk space will be freed.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

(Reading database ... 287191 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing mysql-server-core-5.7 (5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...

Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...

Setting up mysql-common (5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...

update-alternatives: error: alternative path /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback doesn't exist

dpkg: error processing package mysql-common (--configure):

 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-client-5.7:

 mysql-client-5.7 depends on mysql-common (>= 5.5); however:

  Package mysql-common is not configured yet.



dpkg: error processing package mysql-client-5.7 (--configure):

 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.

                                                                                                          Errors were encountered while processing:

 mysql-common

 mysql-client-5.7

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This is just insane as I cannot - under any circumstances or otherwise - get rid of this error. Followed and attempted to do all the different commands listed elsewhere to purge, remove, delete, etc. But I constantly receive this.

Should I just trash the system and start from scratch?