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Innocently I was trying to install another program (python scrapy). And terminal said it could not find libxml2. So I had the bright idea of sudo apt get remove libxml2 so as to get the most recent version.

As the program was running programs disappeared from my screen. This is bad. So I pressed control c. What have I done? How do I fix?

In recovery mode it says libxmllibxml2 is installed but that i can remove unneeded packages with autoremove.

Can that be right that all packages are unneeded. I have no gui

I think i deleted ubuntu desktop somehow. It no longer can be found. Aptget tries to install from Internet but am not connected. No cd drive on this device.

I have linux on usb stick but i can't find desktop on there

john mangual
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1 Answers1

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The command you entered removed the package containing part of the XML processor for the entire operating system. To do so, it must have also removed many, many other packages that depend on libxml2 -- which apparently includes some critical component of your operating system. The large number of "unneeded" packages are other depends for those extra packages that were removed -- depends that are no longer needed by anything still installed.

Merely reinstalling libxml2 won't fix the problem; you'd still need to reinstall all the other packages that were removed, a task that's most likely impractical (if you don't have a complete list, even if you have unlimited time, you won't get there -- and your internet might not work without libxml2 anyway). Most likely the only solution is going to be to use a Live media (CD, USB drive, etc.) to make a backup of your data files, followed by a reinstall of the entire operating system.

Zeiss Ikon
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