Bug#527283: I can confirm this

[Dominique Brazziel <dbrazziel@snet.net>]

	I just spent the last two hours scrambling because thi s error happened
right when I was upgrading the kernel.  I was _this_ close to wiping the
whole disk and doing a fresh net install, but I was able to recover by
fetching, then installing, aptitude and synaptic from unstable.

	I think the severity should be higher on this bug because periodic
updates are failing, not to mention situations like mine where the
failure happened while the system was being maintained and leaving the
system in an inconsistent state with no rhyme or reason given and only
one tool left to fix it (apt) is potentially catastrophic.