Because I totally screwed up my python installation I manually deleted all the python files and am now trying to reinstall it.
When I type apt-get install --reinstall python2.7
, I get this error message:
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up python-minimal (2.7.3-0ubuntu2.2) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/python-minimal.postinst: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-minimal.postinst: python2.7: not found
dpkg: error processing python-minimal (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127
Setting up python2.7 (2.7.3-0ubuntu3.4) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/python2.7.postinst: 6: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python2.7.postinst:
python2.7: not found
dpkg: error processing python2.7 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python:
python depends on python2.7 (>= 2.7.3); however:
Package python2.7 is not configured yet.
python depends on python-minimal (= 2.7.3-0ubuntu2.2); however:
Package python-minimal is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing python (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates it's a follow-up error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
python-minimal
python2.7
python
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
How do I recover from this?
Edit: Further to kubahaha's suggestion, I tried
# dpkg -P python2.7
and it didn't work because of dependencies. This did remove the packages:
# dpkg -P libapache2-mod-wsgi libpython2.7 python2.7
But then when I tried:
# apt-get install python2.7 libapache2-mod-wsgi libpython2.7
I got this error message:
/var/lib/dpkg/info/python-minimal.postinst: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-minimal.postinst: python2.7: not found
dpkg: error processing python-minimal (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
python-minimal
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
dpkg/apt seem to me to be very fragile in that once the system is in a bad state, they don't seem to ever be able to put themselves back into a good state.