Here is a good article about recovering a Debian system without having a backup of /var/lib/dpkg... http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0113.petreley.html -- R. Douglas Barbieri doug@dooglio.net http://www.dooglio.net GPG Fingerprint: FE6A 6A57 2B95 7594 E534 BFEE 45F1 9E5E F30A 8A27 GPG Public key : http://www.dooglio.net/dooglio.gpg