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umar
Asked: 2010-07-20 23:50:25 +0800 CST

how to repair ubuntu 8.04.4 after uninstalling many things by mistake

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While trying to install rmagick and failing, I thought I would uninstall libfreetype6 and then reinstall it. When I entered sudo apt-get remove libfreetype6

It asked that the following packages will be removed, the list was long and included nearly everything from gnome to java to firefox to chrome and all. the link of output which is badly formatted is here: http://pastie.org/private/yaralfafjwjtsjlnzgwzig

I pressed y for yes, and it uninstalled everything. I shutdown the pc and when i opened it again, there was only command line interface, no desktop! I need to repair it. How can i repair my ubuntu 8.04 install? i dont want to lose any data so i dont want to reinstall ubuntu 8 from cd. Please help!

disaster-recovery data-recovery ubuntu-8.04 reinstall

2 Answers

  1. If you still have a working net connection you can try to reinstall the desktop meta package:

    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

    That should pull in necessary dependencies.

    If you don't have net connection, the easiest is to plug in a wire, activate the adapter:

    ifconfig eth0 up # (or eth1 - depends on which is your wired network adapter)

    and acquire an IP address via dhcp:

    dhclient eth0

    Edit: Of course; I would recommend to mount an USB disk and backup your data before doing anything else.

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  2. Best Answer
    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

    eventually worked. when i ran it, it gave me output like:

    x depends on y but y cannot be installed.

    I continually tried to install y, it would give me a similar error, and again from the ouput I would determine another y, and try to install it. in 3 or 4 attempts like that, i installed some missing libraries, and then i was able to install ubuntu-desktop.

    My desktop interface is now back, but it is not completely set up as many applications are crashing still. I am now using another OS (ubuntu 10) so haven't bothered fixing this completely.

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