Bug#276060: apt problems: Maybe that helps

[Helmut Toplitzer <helmut@ifit.uni-klu.ac.at>]

Hi!

I ran into the same problem on a clean (quite minimal) stable
system. (apt 0.5.4)
Heres what I've done to resolve the problem:

diff /var/lib/dpkg/status-old /var/lib/dpkg/status

to see what has changed during the last working apt-cycle.
Take a note somewhere. (In my case it was the removing of iptables
package which reproducible crashed my apt, even after reinstall
etc.)

cp status-old to status

undo the done by reinstalling the affected packages.

install another package (bzip2 or something else)

remove (bzip2 bzip2libs or sth. else) and iptables.
(the ones that caused the problems)

after that it wos working without problems....