I have recently installed postfix and while configuring the server have run into an issue. At one point I received the error from my syslog,

fatal: open lock file /var/lib/postfix/master.lock: cannot open file: Permission denied

I am logged in as root.
On another forum I had the recommendation to remove the file master.lock and to run an apt-get update, then restart.
I did these and log back in to find that my directory is empty.

ls -l /var/lib/postfix/

total 0

I have then tried to purge the program by doing apt-get purge postfix as root and reinstalling the program.
No matter what I do, I cannot get the files back under /var/lib/postfix/.