Request for assistance (hopefully not OT)

[Loris Bennett]

o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor at gmail.com> writes:

> Greetings
>
> I was having space issues in my /usr directory so I deleted some
> programs thinking that the space taken was more an issue than having
> older versions of the program.
>
> So one of the programs I deleted (using rm -r) was python3.9.

Deleting anything from /usr via 'rm -r' which was installed via the
package manager is an extremely bad idea.  If you want to remove stuff,
use the package manager.
 
> Python3.10 was already installed so I thought (naively!!!) that things
> should continue working.
> (Python 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 were also part of this cleanup.)

Python 3.10 may be installed, but a significant number of packages
depend on Python 3.9.  That's why you should use the package manager -
it knows all about the dependencies.

> So now I have problems.

I think you had a problem before that.  Debian testing is not an
operating system you should be using if you have a fairly good
understanding of how Debian (or Linux in general) works.

> Following is the system barf that I get when I run '# apt upgrade'.
>
> What can I do to correct this self-inflicted problem?
>
> (running on debian testing 5.17

I think you mean just 'Debian testing', which is what will become the
next version of Debian, i.e. Debian 12.  The '5.17' is just the kernel
version, not a version of Debian. 

> Setting up python2.7-minimal (2.7.18-13.1) ...
> Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
> Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
> /usr/bin/python2.7: can't open file
> '/usr/lib/python2.7/py_compile.py': [Errno 2] No such file or
> directory
> dpkg: error processing package python2.7-minimal (--configure):
>  installed python2.7-minimal package post-installation script
> subprocess returned error exit status 2
> Setting up python3.9-minimal (3.9.12-1) ...
> update-binfmts: warning: /usr/share/binfmts/python3.9: no executable
> /usr/bin/python3.9 found, but continuing anyway as you request
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/python3.9-minimal.postinst: 51: /usr/bin/python3.9: not found
> dpkg: error processing package python3.9-minimal (--configure):
>  installed python3.9-minimal package post-installation script
> subprocess returned error exit status 127
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python3.9:
>  python3.9 depends on python3.9-minimal (= 3.9.12-1); however:
>   Package python3.9-minimal is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package python3.9 (--configure):
>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python2.7:
>  python2.7 depends on python2.7-minimal (= 2.7.18-13.1); however:
>   Package python2.7-minimal is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package python2.7 (--configure):
>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python3.9-dev:
>  python3.9-dev depends on python3.9 (= 3.9.12-1); however:
>   Package python3.9 is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package python3.9-dev (--configure):
>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> . . .
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  python2.7-minimal
>  python3.9-minimal
>  python3.9
>  python2.7
>  python3.9-dev

It might be possible to fix the system.  If will probably be fairly
difficult, but you would probably learn a lot doing it.  However, if I
were you, I would just install Debian stable over your borked system and
then learn a bit more about package management.

Cheers,

Loris

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