dpkg/dselect and why it won't work

["Bart Friederichs" <plant@chello.nl>]

Hi,

I am trying to install Debian 2.1 on a 486/50/8M/800M machine. The first
troubles concerning the cdrom drive (an old sony cdu33a, thanks Bruce, but I
also found it in the CDROM howto (sorry for not cecking first ;o))) are
solved, but the installation still doesn't go too well. I get a lot of
Kernel panics/Oopses (whatever they are) and sometimes the systems just
hangs. I think that is related to bad RAM.

But, the problem i get now, is that 'dpkg' cannot install DEBs. When I try
the following:

dpkg -iB [pkgname]

I get an error like:

.... Warning: files list file missing, assuming 0 files or directories
currently installed.
Unpacking [pkgname] ...
dpkg: Error processing [pkgname] unable to create files list file for pkg
[name]: No such file or directory...

It seems like it needs some kind of list file where it stores pkg
information. I guess it should be created during updating or installing.
Extracting the pkg goes well, but then no pkg info is written.

Help me plz
TIA
Bart