I'm now having problems with dpkg complaining about Available: and Size: fields from my /var/lib/dpkg/status. Should I just get rid of them? Or, as I asked before, is there a way to regenerate my status file so it complies? Interestingly, I tried to recompile dpkg with the patch mentioned previously. Unfortunately, I needed gettext to do so, and since I don't have a working dpkg, it seems I can't unpack it.