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Amanpreet Singh
Asked: 2018-07-01 08:54:14 +0800 CST

Every app in my Xubuntu 18.04 deleted by Tasksel. Please Help

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I tried to remove samba-server with this command (sudo tasksel remove samba-server) and every app even the system apps are deleted and now xubuntu is stuck at boot, just showing loading. What should I do?

Did tasksel deleted my files too?

software-installation boot samba apt tasksel

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    TL;DR - it is a serious bug, do not use tasksel for removing things!

    Analysis

    Below is available options of tasksel:

    $ tasksel --help
Unknown option: help
Usage:
tasksel install <task>...
tasksel remove <task>...
tasksel [options]
    -t, --test          test mode; don't really do anything
        --new-install   automatically install some tasks
        --list-tasks    list tasks that would be displayed and exit
        --task-packages list available packages in a task
        --task-desc     returns the description of a task

    Samba task is named as samba-server as you wrote:

    $ tasksel --list-tasks | grep -i Samba
u samba-server  Samba file server

    It consists of only one package:

    $ tasksel --task-packages samba-server
samba-server^

    If we try to simulate uninstall - we get the following line:

    $ sudo tasksel --test remove samba-server
debconf-apt-progress -- apt-get -q -y \
-o APT::Install-Recommends=true \
-o APT::Get::AutomaticRemove=true -o APT::Acquire::Retries=3 \ 
install samba-server^-

    (in the line above the last hyphen - cause problems).

    What I did:

    1. Booted Ubuntu 18.04 LTS clean VM, installed tasksel with sudo apt-get install tasksel
    2. Installed Samba with sudo tasksel install samba-server
    3. Ran sudo tasksel remove samba-server
    4. Rebooted and got broken system on next boot

    Fix the system

    Then I tried to repair the system:

    1. We need to boot in Recovery mode (click Shift on boot, in GRUB select Advanced options for Ubuntu, select Ubuntu, with Linux ... (recovery mode))

    2. Select resume Resume normal boot to access login shell

    3. Open first console #1 with Ctrl+Alt+1 then login

    4. If you do not have internet - check Ethernet interface name and run DHCP-client manually on it:

      ifconfig -a # got enp0s3
sudo dhclient enp0s3

    5. Reinstall xubuntu-desktop meta-package to the system:

      sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

    6. After reboot I can access the system.

    Conclusion

    So it seems that it is a serious bug - I have found some with almost same symptoms:

    Also I have filed new bug 1779645 "Critical bug in tasksel: tasksel remove task-name removes whole system"

    What to do?

    Do not use tasksel for removing things at least on 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS.

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