[PLUG] Seriously broken Debian package manager

[Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

<SIGH>

So I'm in the process of upgrading from stable to testing ... and the damn
hardware locks up tight. Norecourse but to power off. When it comes back up,
I try to finish out the update, by doing "apt-get -f install". I get many
complaints:

things like "dpkg-preconfigure - line 3 BEGIN not found"
many other errors on other lines, things like "qq comand not found"

--bad perl install?

update-alternatives error messages about not being able to execute "new
pre-install scripts"; no such file; command not found; /eoment: no such
file"

I think my list of available packages is hosed. I have tried "apt-get
update" again, and "dselect update"; neither has helped.

I gotta get this thing back up and running soon.

Pointers? I can't seem to find anything useful by googling around, but that
may be because I'm stressed out and entering bad search terms. :-(

Anyways, I can't install any packages at ALL now. And I *really* don't feel
like re-formatting and starting over ...

Plus, I can't even stay late; they lock the building here around 6PM. So I
can't do anything about it until Wed A.M.

I may not be at the meeting Wed. :-)


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