Uninstalled vlc, completely broke whonix, can I recover?

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From qubes-users mailing list: Apt attempting to remove packages in whonix-gw (vlc mentioned specifically):

I’m trying to remove some applications that I don’t need (like VLC).

The problem is that apt attempts to remove a number of packages that I’m
not sure if i need or not - some of the whonix-gw/qubes specific packages
seem reasonably important.

  1. Are these packages needed? What are the for - the initial install?

  2. Also would it be safe to autoremove? Given the huge list of packages in
    the autoremove section.

The last time i done autoremove the whonix-gw complained that the
“qubes-whonix-gateway” package was missing.

my reply:

Some things to consider:

  • Always experiment on Cloned VMs, preferably off-line. (Qubes-only) For Whonix-GW, make sure no VMs are associated with it - no child VMs (if template), no upstream VMs (if proxyVM).

  • Relevant documentation (including links to package lists): Debian Packages - Whonix

  • Figure it out yourself using apt-cache rdepends. Try sudo apt-cache --recursive rdepends vlc and you’ll see just how many packages rely on vlc at some level. Doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be removed but you’ll have broken dependencies unless everything in that list is removed also.

  • Feel free to ask here: expand systemcheck unwanted packages list (I would answer here but I don’t know.)

  • use the --installed option to only see packages installed on your system (and work backwards) so:
    sudo apt-cache --installed rdepends vlc
    sudo apt-cache --installed rdepends phonon-backend-vlc
    sudo apt-cache --installed rdepends phonon
    uh-oh…

Don’t know about recovering Whonix. But the disk image is not encrypted (by default) so you should be able to mount it in another VM and recover files. (Not a whonix-specific issue.)

Try search engine: virtualbox recover files from broken machine
or: virtualbox mount image

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