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I was using Ubuntu happily for some months (almost fully updated, latest AMD driver and everything). About a week ago I started trying to install some games that I bought on Humble Bundle that I downloaded at home and other PCs (my internet is a piece of crap, so it's easier by Torrent), and some of them were .deb files.

When I tried to install those, some would try to install and then go back, like nothing happened (probably because of an internal error), or asked for dependencies that I couldn't find. Because of those problems, I tried to install the same packages using the Terminal (using sudo dpkg -i <package name>), but after a while a red balloon icon appeared on the Menu Bar with an error on a file that contained repositories (don't remember the exact error, sorry. But I think it was that it was invalid and it couldn't write it).

I left it to fix later, but after a while the Software Center started giving broken package error and asked to repair it, so I opened the Terminal and did apt-get install -f, like I did when that happened before. It asked me to download 888 Kb of packages and I allowed it, but then, shortly after, it started removing everything on the system on its on. It uninstalled the interface, the network driver, a lot of programs, and so on.

When I noticed it, I quickly closed it but it was too late. The Network Connection menu was gone (and probably the driver), so I couldn't use the internet. Seeing that there was nothing I could do on my own, I rebooted to see if it was temporary, but now the system boots without a graphical interface (it only shows tty).

I have a 3G internet (slow as hell), and I don't know how to connect it using only the terminal, so it is a lot more difficult to fix it. So, is it possible to fix it without reinstalling (PLEEEASE, DON'T MAKE ME REINSTALL THAT WITH THIS CRAPPY CONNECTION)?, and I have the Live USB here if necessary.

Oh, and I forgot to give important information. I am using Ubuntu 12.10 AMDx64, installed on a 101GB ext4 partition. There were only 58MB (approximately) of updates waiting to be done (so it was updated, mostly).

Aditya
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1 Answers1

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Probably you have installed some deb which conflicted with some package that probably was required for some of the applications you mentioned, so they were removed.

If you are using 12.04, I some time ago have seen a bug that may be related to what happened to you (apt-get removed some packages when asked to install 32bit libs, if i'm not wrong).

Either way you should be able to recover, but you will need an internet connection and you may need to download some packages.

To connect your 3G device see if this helps. You may also need to edit /etc/resolv.conf with your DNS information. Also there is a small tool called sakis3g that may help you.

After you are connected to the internet, try

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

This should install everything that is in a default Ubuntu installation. Note that probably you will need to uninstall whatever caused the conflict.

If it doesn't work you can use dpkg --get-selections to get a listing of the installed/removed packages, and from there install them manually (ie, one by one).

Tip: next time you need to check whatever apt-get will do, add --dry-run to the command: it will only simulate the execution, and will not modify the system. Example:

$ sudo apt-get remove tasksel --dry-run
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  tasksel tasksel-data
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv tasksel [2.88ubuntu9] [tasksel-data:amd64 ]   <-- tasksel would be removed.
Remv tasksel-data [2.88ubuntu9]                    <-- tasksel-data would be removed.
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