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[LUG] Repairing a poorly Ubuntu/Debian system...

 

Hi all,

In a bid to cut down the Ubuntu system installed on an old laptop, I 
have managed to strip it more than I had intended.  I wanted to strip it 
down to command-line only so I could have a nice, clean system to add a 
lightweight GUI onto, instead of adding the lightweight GUI and then 
trying to remove all traces of the heavier-weight ones, and I have 
indeed now got a system that boots to command-line only... and that's 
the problem.  I haven't got apt, wget, dpkg, etc.

Under such circumstances I would be tempted to just say "blow it, let's 
re-install"... however... this machine has a broken DVD drive (and being 
a laptop, it isn't easy getting another one to work), it won't boot from 
USB (despite being a 2.8GHz P4 (so a relatively newish machine)) and I 
don't have a compatible floppy drive to put in the DVD drive bay.  I'm 
not sure I can be arsed to set up a netboot server (unless anyone has a 
foolproof guide with explicitly clear instructions), so I can only see 
that fixing it is the way forth.

Any thoughts?

Grant.



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