Accidentally uninstalled Python

Question

I was banging my head off the wall trying to change the path of pip install on my Ubuntu install. I guessed that it may have been the number of Python installations on my machine. I ended up accidentally deleting python and python3 from /usr/bin/.

Now nothing works. Both apt-get and sudo no longer work. Every command I run, I get the same output:

-bash: /usr/lib/command-not-found: /usr/bin/python3: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I deleted the contents of /home/ubuntu/usr/bin. I was able to re-create that folder and I copied the files from /root/usr/bin/. I have also copied python3 and python into /home/ubuntu/usr/bin.

I am still getting the error:

-bash: /usr/lib/command-not-found: /usr/bin/python3: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I am honestly navigating in the dark, any help would greatly appreciated.

Did you remove the packages, or just delete the (symbolic links) /usr/bin/python and/or /usr/bin/python3? If the latter, it should be a simple matter of recreating the symlinks. If you need help with that, please [edit] your question to include the output of ls -ld /usr/bin/python[23].[0-9] — steeldriver, Jan 21 '21 at 22:09
I still have the packages. I removed the symlinks I guess (there where red highlighted! I have deleted usr/bin/ directory. How would I got about recovering the symlinks? — Murcielago, Jan 21 '21 at 22:14
Does this answer your question? Updates stopped and fix-broken install is broken — Raffa, Jan 21 '21 at 22:31
no, I don't think I can restore with a USB drive, my machine is linked to aws EC2 instance — Murcielago, Jan 21 '21 at 22:37
If you deleted the whole /usr/bin directory, then you will have a lot more issues than just python unfortunately — steeldriver, Jan 21 '21 at 23:18
so I think I am lucky that I have deleted what was inside of /home/ubuntu/usr/bin which didnt contain much things, I was a able to recreate a bin directory and I copy what was in root/usr/bin. I copied python 3 and python3.6 without success — Murcielago, Jan 21 '21 at 23:27
Does this answer your question? Removed Python 3 and now Ubuntu Software Center, terminal and other applications don't work — karel, Jan 22 '21 at 06:46

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '21 at 03:30

You're likely running into issues with Ubuntu's "Command not found, did you mean [X]?" feature, which I believe is written in Python which would explain the issue you're facing.

Something you can try is changing your terminal's shell to /bin/sh, which shouldn't have the issue (because it doesn't load profiles). From this point you should be able to fix your system and get Python installed again.

Accidentally uninstalled Python

1 Answers1