This afternoon I've been trying to get an unstable installation to work - and debconf keeps baulking. Understandably, 13 or so packages won't install without debconf being installed. It's giving compilation errors in perl files or something like that - pretty complicated. Could someone have a look and see if they can apt-get debconf - and if it installs ok? Is this just something that's temporary? sorry about the lack of detail! thanks, Renai