Installing libc4

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

Today I tried to install libc4-4.6.27-13.deb, but failed, and now have a
corrupt or at least fragile system.  

(Background info:  I had a directory named /usr/src/linux -- 
the result of untarring a kernel package that I'd recently gotten from one 
of the kernel mirrors).

When the installation script for libc4 came upon the fact that /usr/src/linux
wasn't exactly what it was expecting, it aborted.  Thereafter, dpkg wouldn't
work because it couldn't find libc.so.4, and I couldn't 'make' a new version 
of dpkg from the source because make couldn't find libdb.so.1.

I got my system back up by ftp'ing copies of libc.so.4.6.27 and libdb.so.1.85.2
from another system, then re-making the links by hand.  This may or may not
have restored the system to its original state.

I then moved /usr/src/linux to /usr/src/linux-1.3.91 (chagrined that I
hadn't done this before), and tried again to install libc4-4.6.27-13.deb.
This time, the install didn't erase any files, but aborted once again, with
the following complaints:

ln: libc.so.4.6.27.save: No such file or directory
ln: libm.so.4.6.27.save: No such file or directory
ln: libcurses.so.0.1.2.save: No such file or directory
ln: libdb.so.1.85.1.save: No such file or directory
rm: linux: is a directory
dpkg: warning - old post-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ...
dpkg: error processing libc4-4.6.27-13.deb (--unpack):
 there is no script in the new version of the package - giving up

I'm hoping someone might know how I might salvage this situation.

With thanks in advance,
Susan Kleinmann
sgk@sgk.tiac.net