Recover Ubuntu from Text Mode – How to Guide

I have to add a new answer since this is way past the character count of a comment.

Here's what I would do to make this easier:

Make a file named recover.sh in your home directory with touch recover.sh. Then run cat /var/log/apt/history.log > recover.sh.

Now you have a copy of your logfile in a shell script file. You just need to edit it to make it re-install your stuff. You can use any shell editor you want, but I would use vi vi recover.sh.

Press "i" to insert and start editing. Press Esc then ":wq" to save and quit. Add "#!/bin/bash" to the first line of the file. Then when you see the packages you want to install change it to start as "sudo apt-get install -y ..." add a ";" at the end so it keeps going when you run it. You can use "dd" while not in insert mode to delete a whole line. This will make it faster to remove that garbage.

Here's an example of what my install script for a fresh install of Ubuntu looks like:

#!/bin/bash
#Ubuntu_install.sh
#Update and dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get update;
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y;

#Install Extras and Codecs
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras -y;
sudo apt-get install libavformat-extra-53 libavcodec-extra-53 -y;

#Install OpenJDK
sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin openjdk-7-jre -y;
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk -y;

#Install Extra Applications
sudo apt-get install gparted gufw eclipse vlc vim htop git -y;

When you have set that up and removed all the extra fluff, run chmod +x recover.sh so you can run the script. Then run it with ./recover.sh . It should ask for your root password and then start going to work.

Usually that error message means Linux doesn't recognize the file as a shell script or as an executable file.

Typically the cause is running an executable on the wrong architecture - if you try to run x86 executables on an ARM CPU, this message comes up.

Did /usr/bin/id get overwritten, possibly?