Re: sarge dist-upgrade "Package is in a very bad inconsistent state"

[Conrad Newton <conrad.newton@broadpark.no>]

>From Will Trillich on Monday, 2004-09-06 at 14:32:09 -0500:
> f.y.i.
> 
> in trying an upgrade (dist-upgrade) from woody to sarge, we ran
> into trouble with the following sympoms:
> 
> root@www# apt-get -f install postgresql

(snip)

> dpkg: error processing postgresql (--remove):
>  Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
>  reinstall it before attempting a removal.
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  postgresql
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

It is not an answer to your question, and maybe it is not even
relevant to your problem, but I am having similar problems
here with tetex-base.  When I try to correct the problem,
I get a system crash or even trigger a reboot.

The system is a mixture of testing and unstable (pinned to
testing, but with several major applications upgraded).  
I have had numerous instabilities lately, and thought
that I might improve the situation by upgrading to
unstable (my unstable box works just fine), but instead
things look worse than ever . . .

For example, I was just going to try the following

apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a

but already at the first step, I get a reboot!!!????!!!
What could be causing this?

Conrad