I accidentally deleted the /usr/bin directory. Using a bootable usb, is it possible to rescue my machine?
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This is possible, but you might be better off re-installing. If you want to try, I would first try to copy enough of dpkg to your filesystem that dpkg will run. There are a bunch of files from dpkg that are in /usr/bin/. Copy those in. For convenience, the list is
/usr/bin/dpkg-trigger
/usr/bin/dpkg-deb
/usr/bin/dpkg
/usr/bin/dpkg-query
/usr/bin/dpkg-split
/usr/bin/dpkg-maintscript-helper
/usr/bin/dpkg-divert
/usr/bin/update-alternatives
/usr/bin/dpkg-statoverride
Then you can download debs to the system, to, first, reinstall dpkg, and then reinstall apt. apt and dpkg don't seem to depend on other stuff in /usr/bin, so they might run. Once you have dpkg working, you can get a list of packages you have installed (using, e.g. dpkg -l), and then run apt to reinstall them. A detailed recipe would be hard without actually trying it.
If you do decide to go that route, post comments here if you run into problems.
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I just ended up reinstalling after copying over as many files as possible with dd. Thanks for the answer, though! When I inevitably screwup again, I'll be back. – NecroTechno Mar 12 '14 at 22:34
