To support debugging, I've made a copy of the /var/lib/dpkg directory. You can easily simulate the problem by - Generating a minium debian system with something like debootstrap sid /tmp/boot file:/mnt/debian/main - fetch http://www.danisch.de/tmp/dpkg.tgz and unpack it in /tmp/boot/var/lib - dpkg --root=/tmp/boot --configure --pending goes into an endless loop. regards Hadmut