Correction below:
On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 11:30:31AM -0400, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote: > Hi folks, > > I've been using Debian Stretch for a couple of months, and following > this list for a month or two. I'm afraid I did something stupid anyway, > and find myself with a damaged apt-get and can't figure out how to fix > it short of reinstalling. > > Here is what I did to damage it: > > The discussion about automatic upgrading contained a reference to > "upgrade-system" and I decided to give it a try. > > I installed it, placed a recommended set of preferences in > /etc/apt/preferences.d with a legally named file, and executed it > > # upgrade-system > > It should me what it wanted to do, mostly no surprises, except it's > last item wanted to remove dozens and dozens of things, some of which I > recognized as things I manually requested in connection with an earlier > (and abandoned) experiment. > > So I said "no" to the prompt. So far so good. > > After a bit, I decided to back out of my interest in upgrade-system, > and remove it with apt-get remove. > > And here is what I think was stupid: > > I had also played with the command "apt" which is another front to > apt-get and friends, and perhaps misremembered whether it was already > present, or whether I had to install it to play with it. What I did > that was stupid was to add it to the packages to remove, so I entered > this: > > # apt-get remove upgrade-system apt > > I am now unable to use any of my familiar package tools. Although > "which" shows me apt-get, it cannot be found when attempting to execute Sorry! apt-get is not shown by which. aptitude is. > it. Running aptitude complains about not finding apt-get. > dpkg-reconfigure doesn't help, nor dpkg -i apt-get. > > Is there anything I can do short of reinstalling? I am no beginner, but > I am pretty new to Debian. I am using a base system with a screen > reader, no desktop. (which I installed with the netinst CD image on > purpose, despite the defaults, which I don't regard as a problem). > > If I can get out of this one, I promise never to do a stupid thing > again. > > Chuck > > > > -- > When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. -- When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
