Unable to fsync updated status of 'xxxxxx': Input/output error

[David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org>]

Any idea why I might be getting this error from dpkg when trying to
install packages?  It seems to be sort of random...

I straced it and it is indeed fsync failing.

This is on an unstable system that was brute force installed
(uncompress base*.tgz).  I have a feeling that this is the cause of
the problem but I'm not sure where I might have gone astray, or which
config file I might have missed...

Thanks,
-- 
David N. Welton            (    Circa mea pectora 
davidw@prosa.it            )    multa sunt suspiria
http://www.efn.org/~davidw (    de tua pulchritudine
debian.org + prosa.it      )    que me ledunt misere