Apt broken

[Michael Satterwhite]

Earlier today, I tried to upgrade from Hardy to Intrepid using the 
dist-upgrade. It didn't work; the system reported that I no longer had a 
video device installed. I didn't think it was a big deal as I had everything 
backed up and could simply reinstall Hardy, restore my configuration files 
and be back where I started ... I thought.

After reinstalling Hardy, I restored my Hardy /etc to get my old 
configurations back. It looked good ... but

Apt appears broken. When I try doing an upgrade or an install (not a 
dist-upgrade!!), I'm getting errors as follows:

Preconfiguring packages ...
Setting up base-files (4.0.1ubuntu5.8.04.3) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.postinst: 156: awk: not found
/var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.postinst: 156: awk: not found
dpkg: error processing base-files (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 base-files
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This was on an "apt-get install mysql-server". I think it somehow thinks it 
needs to upgrade a package that isn't installed due to my restoring en mass 
the configurations. Can anyone offer some help on how to get my package 
manager going again?

Thanks in advance
---Michael