dpkg broken?

[Stefan Baums <sb51@soas.ac.uk>]

Hi all.

OK, so yesterday, in the process of updating my system to the newest
slink, I broke dpkg. I cannot install packages anymore. The error
messages are as follows:

Preparing to replace modconf 0.2.23 (using modconf_0.2.24.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement modconf ...

gzip: stdout: Broken pipe
dpkg-deb: subprocess gzip -dc returned error exit status 1
dpkg: error processing modconf_0.2.24.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 cron_3.0pl1-50.deb
 freetype2-dev_1.2-3.deb
 freetype2_1.2-3.deb
 kernel-doc-2.0.36_2.0.36-2.deb
 libg++2.8.2_2.91.60-4.deb
 modconf_0.2.24.deb
E: Sub-process returned an error code
Exit 100

Actually, the problem might be not dpkg as such: to remedy the situation,
I grabbed dpkg and gzip from stable and manually (ar -x ; tar xvzf ; cp -R)
installed them, but that has not changed the situation. Some other
package must have broken dpkg.

Any ideas?
Stefan