sudo apt-get purge python* && sudo apt-get autoclean && sudo apt-get install python*
Which I did without paying attention to what I was doing and it turns out that this is one of the worst things you could do ever on a Debian-based distro.
Damn you, abu-ahmed al-khatiri.
Coworker was trying to remove node so we could install a new version, so he ran:
rm -rf /usr/bin node
-rf was due to muscle memory, and unfortunately he forgot the space.
That was a fun one to clean up. We were able to use nc because that was in /bin and not /usr/bin, so we used that to pipe curl over through a socket and then used curl to install dpkg + apt, then ran apt update to fix everything and that seemed to work.
That server is still running today, but I'm sure something is still seriously wrong with it. Nothing that affects me though, so I don't care haha.
Why would something by in /usr/bin that would be manual deletion? Wouldn't it be in /usr/local/bin? Were they manually deleting a package managed binary?
For that matter, if you're manually installing a component like node with a large set of dirs and you might want a different version at some point (you're more likely to update to a newer major version of node than you are some base library for the system) why wouldn't you put it into /opt/node-X.Y.Z (if not an actual package for the distro)?
We could assume the people weren't as much admins as devs with some minimal admin experience so weren't familiar with some of these common admin practices that have been developed over the years to manage stuff easier and safer, but then why are they root with the ability to blow out /usr/bin and not a user account installing node locally?
It feels like there's some larger problems that even allowed something like this to happen. It's like hearing someone say "my simple webapp connected to the wrong DB server and completely deleted out all the databases there, including the billing one." The first response I have to something like that is "what were you guys doing that something like that was even possible?"
When I meant it's still used today; it is, but it just displays a dashboard on a TV screen, it's not actually handling customer data or doing anything critical.
"cannot remove 'foo': is a directory"
Just remove the darned object you're given as an argument using the appropriate implementation for its type.
"rm: remove write-protected regular file 'foo'?"
The rules are that if the directory is writable, the object can be deleted. Though you called stat to figure out it's a regular file, you didn't notice the link count: I have two more hard links to the file in the same directory, and one elsewhere. But, yes, unlink it.
I'd probably have that habit if I didn't once delete everything in a /bin directory early on in my learning, and luckily it was in a VM.
I imagine apt has something similar, and maybe it's not (or wasn't) set by default on the dist you're running? If not, I would raise that as a bug with the distro, as breaking it with a command like that should be much harder to do accidentally.
Nothing is wrong.
If you go with a default installation, and start building over there, for example a desktop system. This will remove everything else that depends on python (not only python).
And that, is probably wrong, as you do not expect to remove half of the system (and don't reinstall it back), when you try to reinstall python, like megiddo said.
Some packages that do not need python at all, depend on python because of the packaging choices, like post/pre install scripts written in python instead of shell.
Other packages that do not use python in their core functionality (for example a program written in C) depend on python because of add-on scripts or contributed extensions, shipped in the same package.
Unlike Debian, in the Ubuntu case this command is worse, because Canonical push hard for python.
Historically, many Debian packages depending on python, have been introduced or modified by maintainers/developers working for Canonical.
To install a minimal Ubuntu server without python, first you need to remove many packages (a lot), related to launchpad, or landscape, or a few other Ubuntu specific services, or stuff really intended for desktop users (not for a minimal server).
Nothing against Python or Canonical... but as I have needed to deploy servers at work with the requirement of really really minimal base, I know well about removing Python in both Linux distributions.
It's not quite rm -rf /, but it was certainly "fun".
Who? The Osama bin Laden associate?
Why?