[plug] fouled-up apt: cannot even force-remove-reinstreq a package :-(

[Denis Brown]

Dear PLUG list members,

I've been looking into the following problem on and off for a couple of
days and do not seem to be getting very far.   Inspiration welcome :-)

As a result of incorporating some packages from backports into my Debian
woody system I have managed to foul up the package management system.  My
first notice of this was when I went to do a kernel compile and at
the make modules_install got a wild set of error messages.   Then a
routine apt-get update; apt-get upgrade returned unexpected errors.   I
have narrowed it down to autoconf and automake, both of which i had to
upgrade from the usual woody versions to build some graphical
applications from source tarballs.   dpkg -l autoconf now tells me to
remove and reinstall it having a status of "rFR" meaning desired state =
"remove" present status = "Failed-config" and Error condition =
"Reinst-required"   The upper case flags indicate serious discontent :-)

No worries except that doing (as root)

dpkg -r --force-remove-reinstreq autoconf

returns the following unhappiness...

dpkg - warning, overriding problem because --force enabled:
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal.
(Reading database ... 27256 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing autoconf ...
install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.
dpkg: error processing autoconf (--remove):
 subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 autoconf

What the heck is "No dir file specified" meant to mean????

This is the first time I have made any of my Debian systems at all unhappy
in this way so I don't have an experience base upon which to work.   I've
done a fair bit of Googling and read accounts of this sort of thing but
all with happy endings!   Some mention of dpkg problems appears in the
PLUG archives, too, but the suggestions there (from people such as
Cameron and Bernard) failed to shine any light on this for me.   I could
do a full reinstallation but this seems like a good chance to learn a bit
about fixing broken Debian systems :-)

TIA,
Denis