I have broken apt-get Panic!

[Dave Whiteley <d.l.whiteley@ee.leeds.ac.uk>]

Hello,

I have an old system that has been running "stable" for ages. I am now
truing to upgrade it to "testing" but somehow I have got myself into a
deadlock position.

debconf is dying because:-

   debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (IO object version 1.21 does not
   match bootstrap parameter 1.20 at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/DynaLoader.pm
   line 245.

and so I cannot upgrade anything now.

The tail end of the error messages looks like :-


Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (IO object version 1.21 does not match bootstrap parameter 1.20 at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/DynaLoader.pm line 245.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/IO/Handle.pm line 9.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/IO/Handle.pm line 9.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/IO/Seekable.pm line 51.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/IO/Seekable.pm line 51.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/IO/File.pm line 112.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/IO/File.pm line 112.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.8/FileHandle.pm line 9.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 3.
) -- aborting
E: Failure running script /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true



Any ideas how I can rescue the situation?

Dave

-- 

Dave Whiteley
d.l.whiteley@ee.leeds.ac.uk
Phone +44 (0)113 343 2059
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
The University of Leeds. Leeds, LS2 9JT,  UK