apt upgrade sarge -> etch udev error can't get past it. Ideas?

[Mitchell Laks <mlaks@post.harvard.edu>]

Hi,

I am upgrading an old server to etch to be able to use new sata drives. I followed
the release notes.

I first did 
apt-get upgrade
then I did
apt-get install initrd-tools

then i installed 
linux-image-2.6.18-686 

at this point i got an error from udev. It said that the
install of udev failed at the pre install script with error 1.
or something like that.
I tried 
apt-get install -f
but it did not help.

how can i get at the pre install script and see
what the error is?

I want to avoid just reinstalling etch from scratch if I can.

How to go about debugging the error? 
1. Make it more verbose
and 
2. find the script - where is it kept?
3. then edit the preinstall script and fix the problem? 

also I notice that now the machine will not recognize the 
ethernet device eth0, which is irritating and probably secondary
to the messed up udev.

I hate to bring up sarge-> etch issues
as they are old hat as I mostly run sid on my workstations.
But this is an old server

thanks!

Mitchell