how do I get dselect working again?

[David Stern <dstern@u.washington.edu>]

Hi People,

I'm running slink and when I tried to update my packages the other 
night using dselect, a number of packages, mostly perl and pam, had 
errors.  Now dselect is stuck.  I can't update, install, switch to ftp 
access method, ..   It's already been couple days, and I've seen no 
mention of how to rekindle the dselect fire on debian-user.  (pretty 
quiet, actually)  What must I do to get dselect working again?  I've 
been watching bug track and I see this remains as outstanding critical.

(error messages below)

Thanks,

David

dstern@u.washington.edu
==================================================================

If I try to access the ftp dselect method I get the error message:
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  Can't locate Net/FTP.pm in @INC (@INC contains: 
  /usr/lib/perl5/i386-linux/5.005 /usr/lib/perl5/5.005
  /usr/local/lib/site_perl/i386-linux /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at 
  /usr/lib/dpkg//methods/ftp/setup line 7.
  BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/dpkg//methods/ftp/setup 
line 7.
  query/setup script returned error exit status 2.
  -----------------------------------------------------------

If I try to run a install using dselect I get the error message:
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  Updating package status cache...done
  Checking system integrity...dependency error
  Correcting dependencies...ok
  Sorry, but the following packages are broken - this means they have 
unmet
  dependencies:
    libpam0: Depends:libpam0g
    perl: Depends:perl-base
  -----------------------------------------------------------

If I try to run update using dselect I receive the error message:
  -----------------------------------------------
  Updating package file cache...done
  Updating package status cache...done
  Checking system integrity...dependency error
  You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
  Sorry, but the following packages are broken - this means they have 
unmet
  dependencies:
    perl-suid: Depends:perl
    libpam0: Depends:libpam0g
    perl: Depends:perl-base
  Merging Available information
  ----------------------------------------------

And if I try to run apt-get -f install (as suggested above):
  ----------------------------------------------
  Updating package status cache...done
  Checking system integrity...dependency error
  Correcting dependencies...ok
  The following packages will be REMOVED:
    libmime-base64-perl alien apache-common dwww 
    procmail-lib xaw-wrappers libgtk-perl libnet-perl premail weblint
    apache libmd5-perl lg-base fvwmconf dpkg-dev makepasswd 
kernel-package
    libhtml-parser-perl pkg-order ucspi-tcp-src dpkg-ftp dpkg-http 
econfigedit
    libpam0-altutil libwww-perl perl-suid debhelper info2www dftp 
sysutils
    xlogmaster libpam0
    perl-tk perl 
  WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
  This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
    perl perl perl 
  0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 59 to remove and 28 not 
upgraded.
  7 packages not fully installed or removed.
  Need to get 0b of archives. After unpacking 46.8M will be freed.
  Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
  -----------------------------------------------