Broken symlink /usr/bin/env?

Question

On my Ubuntu, when I write some script (or using for example Composer) it returns me this error:

-bash: /usr/local/bin/composer: /usr/bin/env: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

This is an error with env php, but it's the same for env ruby or others.

I saw with ll that the symlink of /usr/bin/env, pointing to /bin/env is broken (red text with black background), in fact /bin/env doesn't exist.

I remember that I used composer many times (is a web server based on Ubuntu 16.04) and I didn't touch the server, weird.

If I run "env php" it tells me that env is not installed (?) and I can install it with apt install coreutils, but obviously coreutils is installed.

Do you think I can solve this with reinstalling coreutils?

sudo apt-get install --reinstall coreutils

Is it dangerous? As I said, is a web server, I don't want to lose something or to have website offline.

Answer 1

No, in theory, reinstalling coreutils shouldn't be dangerous and yes, it should bring back env.

However, I would be more worried about why it's missing in the first place. If you are sure you haven't changed anything and this is a webserver so, presumably, open to the internet, you want to check whether your system could have been compromised.