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Recently installed gnome-shell over Ubuntu, but it wasn't really as I rembered it so tried to go back. Followed a set of recommended steps here on AskUbuntu, mainly from this and followed the last answer that can be summoned as following:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-*
sudo reboot
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo reboot

In the install ubuntu-dekstop step Ubuntu crashed and when rebooted Ubuntu now fails to start a session. Log in screen can be reached, but the graphics looks a bit odd. When trying to log in the only message I get is simply "Failed to start session".

So I figured that the steps I followed may have been to aggressive and that Ubuntu took a serious hit when I tried to remove GNOME and install ubuntu-desktop again. My question is how I can recover this? Is their a way to reach terminal in the start up session so I can finish the supposed unfinished ubuntu-desktop installation? Or is their another way?

Edit: I of course got the answer how to reach terminal from Login screen by googling, but the problem still exist. How to recover from this mess?

Community
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Lucas
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    Your problem may be very similar to http://askubuntu.com/questions/446651/apt-get-remove-purge-wine-removed-everything and I'm afraid I do not know of a graceful way to recover from this. – Charles Green Oct 28 '14 at 13:59
  • It is similar although I never used purge in the commands I recounted here. In earlier steps though, which where unsuccessful of removing Gnome, I used ppa-purge and purge to remove gmd. Graphics for Gnome did'nt go away this way and that's why I used sudo apt-get remove gnome-* from the begining. – Lucas Oct 28 '14 at 14:21
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    My understanding (poor, I admit) is that apt-get uses regex for matching the patterns, and there may be many packages with gnome in the name... – Charles Green Oct 28 '14 at 14:23
  • @CharlesGreen Exactly, figured as much too when the command prompt went bananas and started to delete packages not releted to the gnome-shell. Banans is maybe the wrong word for this, because I'm the one to blame for this. – Lucas Oct 28 '14 at 14:25
  • If you can still get to terminal mode, then you could backup your important files... – Charles Green Oct 28 '14 at 14:26
  • See my own answer to the question. Files are intact actually. – Lucas Oct 28 '14 at 14:44

2 Answers2

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Run 

sudo apt-get -f install

to retry the installation of packages.

Barafu Albino
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OK. I figured some bits out but still a lot of damage seems to been done. I went to terminal from the Login screen and remade my earlier step by typing in

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

This is a part answer for my earlier question. As pointed out in comments earlier the command I used removed every package with gnome in the name. A lot of package seems not to have been reinstalled when using install ubuntu-desktop. For starters - both Chromium and Mozilla seems to be missing.

So any one that have any idea how to reinstall this packages with a single command? Or do I need to retrace my steps to find every removed package and install them by myself?

Lucas
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