Awful problem with dpkg

[Martin Alonso Soto Jacome <masoto@uniandes.edu.co>]

Hi:

Trying to upgrade the machine of a colegue, I found and awful problem with 
dpkg I haven't managed to deal with.  Apparently, the package database got 
corrupted somehow, preventing me from upgrading any package.  For example, if 
I try to upgrade libc5 with

  dpkg -i libc5_5.4.23-6.deb

I get

  (Reading database ... 15789 files and directories currently installed.)
  Preparing to replace libc5 5.4.20-1 (using libc5_5.4.23-6.deb) ...
  dpkg: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/07' for 
reading: No such file or directory
  dpkg: error processing libc5_5.4.23-6.deb (--install):
   subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 2
  Errors were encountered while processing:
   libc5_5.4.23-6.deb

Even more, upgrading dpkg doesn't work at all:

  (Reading database ... 15789 files and directories currently installed.)
  Preparing to replace dpkg 1.4.0.7 (using dpkg_1.4.0.8.deb) ...
  dpkg: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/07' for 
reading: No such file or directory
  dpkg: error processing dpkg_1.4.0.8.deb (--install):
   subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 2
  Errors were encountered while processing:
   dpkg_1.4.0.8.deb

Any clues on what may be happening?

Regards,

M. S.
------------
Martin A. Soto J.                           Profesor
Departamento de Ingenieria de Sistemas y Computacion
Universidad de los Andes      masoto@uniandes.edu.co



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