dpkg & dselect refuse to delete or install a package

[Joe Block <jpb@creol.ucf.edu>]

A friend of mine is having problems with a package (xwhois) that refuses
to be either upgraded or removed.  That would be no big deal, but it is
also causing dselect & apt to crap out when trying to upgrade.

The system is running stable, and the only entries in the
/etc/apt/sources.list are for my campus mirror, the main debian mirrors
and the security source entry.

When I try to purge or remove xwhois with dpkg, it tells me that I
should try to install it first

$ sudo dpkg --purge xwhois
Password:
dpkg: error processing xwhois (--purge):
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 xwhois                                     
$

When I try to install it, (and yes I nuked
/var/cache/apt/archives/xwhois_0.2.3-1_i386.deb first) with apt-get
install xwhois, I get the following error message:

$ sudo apt-get install xwhois
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Sorry, xwhois is already the newest version
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 19 not upgraded.
1 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 11.5kB of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Get:1 http://campus.mirror.name.removed stable/main xwhois 0.2.3-1
[11.5kB]
Fetched 11.5kB in 0s (75.5kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package xwhois.
(Reading database ... 28852 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace xwhois 0.2.3-1 (using .../xwhois_0.2.3-1_i386.deb)
...
Unpacking replacement xwhois ...
dpkg: warning - old post-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/xwhois_0.2.3-1_i386.deb
(--unpack):
 subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/xwhois_0.2.3-1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process returned an error code (1)
$

How do I get rid of this package? dselect is having fits every time we
try to do an update or install, and while I can apt-get install package1
package2 ... packageN, that's a pretty big pain in the butt.

Removing the campus mirror has no effect other than to force apt or
dselect to download from the main mirror instead, the error messages are
otherwise the same.

Thanks,

jpb
-- 
Joe Block <jpb@creol.ucf.edu>
CREOL System Administrator

Social graces are the packet headers of everyday life.