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I recently messed up when trying to install an application which resulted in me doing a chown command that requires a reinstall of Ubuntu.

I would ideally like to backup all the installed packages I had correctly installed from LiveCD so that I can quickly reinstall them upon finishing the reinstall. Ideally this would not include any of the chown changes that I made.

Is this possible from livecd?

This would suggest it is:How to backup settings and list of installed packages

Most important for me to backup is a package that allows my wifi adapter on my pc to work. Without it I have to relocate the pc to thr router to reinstall and connect to the internet which is a huge pain.

I'm a beginner at Linux and not sure if this is possible. Would appreciate any help! Thanks.

JCG
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    You haven't given your release details, but you can re-install Ubuntu (and flavors) and it will attempt to add back any additional packages you had installed (if available in the Ubuntu repositories), meaning it's back to where it was before you needed the re-install. It won't fix issues related to user configs (it doesn't touch anything in $HOME or your user directory, so if your problem is there, it'll remain). Use "something-else', select your existing partitions, and do NOT format your partitions. It notes packages, erases system directories, installs adds-back noted packages, done – guiverc Jan 01 '21 at 22:32
  • Thank you for your response. The command I ran was: sudo chown -R root:root / – JCG Jan 02 '21 at 00:26
  • Would reinstalling fix issues related to that command? @guiverc I also had the latest version of Ubuntu. – JCG Jan 02 '21 at 00:27
  • You were not very specific with release details, the latest release is Ubuntu 20.10 (2020-October release) but I don't know if you're talking Desktop or Server install, nor if you meant an older release such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (last LTS release etc) It's best if you're specific. If using Ubuntu 20.10 server it should fix issues, however for desktop installs, you may still have issues with your GUI because of ownership issues (desktop re-installs as I described don't touch anything in $HOME so problems there remain...) – guiverc Jan 02 '21 at 00:42
  • Sorry - the release is ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso, so not the latest release. Seems like in this case nothing can be done then as it's desktop. – JCG Jan 02 '21 at 01:01

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