apt-get upgrade broken && ls broken && many others broken

[Chris <debian@cmulcahy.com>]

Greetings:
I run apt-get update&&apt-get upgrade frequently. Seems a recently 
installed package is broken (I'm suspecting fileutils). 

When I do an ls I get:
ls: reading directory .: Function not implemented

When I do an apt-get upgrade I get:
27 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11 not 
upgraded. 3 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/26.2MB of archives. After unpacking 5009kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
dpkg: cannot scan updates directory `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/': Function 
not implemented E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Anyone have suggestions? Is there a known broken package? How do I fix 
the problem? 

The fine folks on #debian at irc.openprojects.net suggested a problem 
between libc6 2.3.1-6 and a 2.2 kernel, though I've not yet found how 
to fix it with apt-get broken. 

I do not believe that I am running sid.  I believe that it is the 
testing release, though I am not certain how I can tell.  

Thanks!
Chris