I tried to install Skype on my 12.04 LTS 64-bit install using the documentation here. Details are below, the TL;DR version is as follows:
- The Skype install (I think) borked a video driver and caused a crash.
- Somehow, the Skype install made Ubuntu think it was a 32 bit box, so when I tried to to "recover" after a restart, selecting the recovery boot option, and using the "fix installed packages" menu option, dpkg "helpfully" removed my 64 bit libraries/kernel and installed the 32 bit versions instead.
- Removing Skype didn't give me my 64 bit version back.
How do I get my 64 bit install back? Is this just a re-install at this point?
Details
I tried using the documentation here. For some reason, the line
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
didn't work. It complained:
dpkg: error: unknown option --add-architecture
Bravely, naively, I went on. These commands went just fine.
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype
I launched Skype. It worked. The audio test worked fine. The video wouldn't work. I did some more searching. I'm on a Lenovo Y510p and the camera detected as an EasyCam but it was just giving me a green rectangle instead of showing my video.
I found this answer, so I hit Fn-Esc. I also double clicked on the green rectangle.
Oh dear Lord was that a bad idea.
My screen went blank. Nothing was working. I used Ctrl-F1 to get to a terminal... a sea of error messages were pouring down -- I logged in (blindly!) and typed
killall skype
The messages stopped. (I don't recall what they said.) I tried Ctrl-F7 back to X, but that X session was still black. I rebooted my box.
It hung on an error that said something about
TDMS table invalid.
Not knowing what to do, I rebooted, went selected the rescue option from the boot loader, and tried to "repair installed packages".
What happened next was really weird: It installed the i386 kernel, even though this is a 64 bit box.
The 32 bit kernel booted okay. I removed skype via
apt-get remove skype
apt-get autoremove
But I can't get my 64 bit kernel back. How do I do that?