apt-get very broken, cannot install or remove _any_ debs

[Matt Tretin]

Time is now 2:30AM EST, about twenty minutes ago two packages were updated via update-notifier, one of them was po-debconf, I cannot remember what the other was. Now, _ALL_ package installation and removal is broken. Output from trying to install any package is below:

Output of /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=gutsy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 7.10"

(two sample package installations)

mst@ziggy:~$ sudo aptitude install xchat

<removed standard stuff>

(Reading database ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libnotify-bin_0.4.4-3build1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 files list file for package `po-debconf' contains empty filename
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libnotify-bin_0.4.4-3build1_i386.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mst@ziggy:~$ sudo aptitude install bitchx

< more predictable stuff removed >

Selecting previously deselected package bitchx.
(Reading database ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/bitchx_1%3a1.1-4ubuntu4_i386.deb (--unpack):
 files list file for package `po-debconf' contains empty filename
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/bitchx_1%3a1.1-4ubuntu4_i386.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:

[noeffex (exodia90638)]

I suffer from this problem as well. It gets pretty lame, after a while.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 108189, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.