Ok I think I have figured out what happened to my dpkg... I lost the file dir or dir.lock that is the database in /usr/info. does anyone know how I can force the creation/recreation of this file? Does any one know the format of this file?? thank for everything Kevin Poorman Kc5vxy@juno.com OR my web page at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/2782 ><icthus>...this is a fish Memory Fault.... Where Am I ?