dpkg: error processing libpam-runtime (--configure):

[Michael Linton <mwl@openmoney.org>]

I recently took over a Debian system whose previous owner had been using 
"testing" apt-get sources.   For reasons that now make no sense even to me I 
switched to "unstable" sources I had been using (without any apparent 
problems) on my laptop for a year.

So - apt-get upgrade failed ------------

Preconfiguring packages ...
Setting up libpam-runtime (0.76-18) ...
dpkg: error processing libpam-runtime (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation scritp returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 libpam-runtime

I'm now pointing to "testing" again but getting the same result.  I tried 
running dpkg -i libpam-runtime.. from the command line and got
the same result. 

# apt-get dist-upgrade does the same.

What could I do to elucidate the actual error message (from post-installation 
script) itself?

# dpkg -l libpam-runtime\*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: 
uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                      Version                   Description
+++-=========================-=========================-==================================================================
iF  libpam-runtime            0.76-18                   Runtime support for 
the PAM library

There's not much space in /var - 15Meg

I realise it's unlikely that anyone can answer such an unspecified question, 
but maybe someone has an idea?  

Michael