install-info problem

[Brian Stults <bs7452@csc.albany.edu>]

Hello,

I'm having a serious problem installing certain new debs.  Some time
ago, my system crashed and when I rebooted, fsck (with my permission)
deleted a lot of files.  It mostly screwed up apache and X.  Eventually
I just forced a reinstall of those packages and most things seem fine
now.  However, now when I update or install new packages, I often have
problems with the post-installation script.  Any package that requires
install-info causes problems.  For example, here's the error from
mtools:

install-info: failed to lock dir for editing! No such file or directory
dpkg: warning - old pre-removal script returned error exit status 2
dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ...
install-info: failed to lock dir for editing! No such file or directory

I have no idea what to do.  I tired looking at an strace, but I couldn't
make enough sense of it to make a prognosis.  Any suggestions?

Thanks.
-- 

Brian J. Stults
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Sociology
University at Albany - SUNY
Phone: (518) 442-4652  Fax: (518) 442-4936
Web: http://www.albany.edu/~bs7452