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How much have I broken and should I just reinstall the OS?

michaelAdam
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  • You could try to restart your computer in recovery mode and use the following command to install all default packages again: `sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop` – Timo Sep 04 '14 at 12:00
  • How do I get networking working in recovery mode? – michaelAdam Sep 04 '14 at 12:47
  • Got that working actually. Are you sure that is all I need to install? – michaelAdam Sep 04 '14 at 13:04
  • It should install all default packages, so that'll do it. – Timo Sep 04 '14 at 15:20
  • So, anyone can gain root access to another person's computer by starting in recovery mode? – michaelAdam Sep 04 '14 at 17:40
  • @michaelAdam Yep. There are quite a few questions about that here. Options range from the nuclear option: use full-disk encryption to the ziplock on the bag: set the root password. – muru Sep 04 '14 at 17:45
  • @muru not that having a root PW set would change a lot - attacker just boots from a media of her own - which she probably would have done anyway :-) – guntbert Sep 04 '14 at 18:22
  • If you find a solution, please answer your own question, as a favor for future users. – Rmano Sep 04 '14 at 18:24
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    @guntbert which is why I said "ziplock on a bag". Let's please, please, please not go down that road. – muru Sep 04 '14 at 18:24
  • @muru I definitely won't go that road **now** - but your statement could be read as recommendation for ... – guntbert Sep 04 '14 at 18:25
  • At everybody: Can you not see me mentioning full-disk-encryption? Nothing short of that is going to stop determined hackers, and maybe not even that. – muru Sep 04 '14 at 18:26

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To answer my real question, uninstalling Python entirely broke the desktop. I was not even able to open text-only mode. I'm not sure how it remained functional for a while; maybe everything was cached. It is not necessary to reinstall the OS.

Following the advice of Timo, I booted in recovery mode following instructions in this tutorial: RecoveryMode. I enabled networking before opening the root shell. I was not able to get online over wifi; I had to use ethernet. Then I ran 

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo reboot

Now my desktop is fixed!

wjandrea
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michaelAdam
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    Installing the task rather than the (meta)package [might work even better.](http://askubuntu.com/a/249373/22949) – Eliah Kagan Sep 05 '14 at 01:58