here is a pretty serious one i can't uninstall sun-j2sdk and i can't install anything else until it gets fixed here is the ouput: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages will be REMOVED:   sun-j2sdk1.5.0 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 96 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 140MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y (Reading database ... 122467 files and directories currently installed.) Removing sun-j2sdk1.5.0 ... rm: cannot remove `/usr/bin/apt': No such file or directory dpkg: error processing sun-j2sdk1.5.0 (--remove):  subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing:  sun-j2sdk1.5.0 i tried touching the "missing" files (hell java trying to remove is very wrong but i'm desparate my system is hosed anyways). ther's a whole bunch of them so i even went as far as coinning an ugly script together: #!/bin/bash errFile="not null" until [ -z "$errFile" ]; do   for i in $(cat touchy); do     sudo touch $i     echo "touching:$i"   done   if ! sudo dpkg --force-all --remove sun-j2sdk1.5.0 2> out >/dev/null; then     errFile="$(head -n 1 out | sed -e"s|rm: cannot remove .$.*$.:.*|\1|")"     echo "$errFile" | tee -a touchy   fi done but it loops on /usr/bin/javah. aparentky touching isn't enough here. help needed till p.s.: excuse me for the caps etc.. i'm typing from my breezy box and shift doesn't work.