I've verified that if I copy the backup (/var/backup/dpkg.status.0) to /var/lib/dpkg/status and then run apt-get update it works fine. This would be doing a dist-upgrade again to get the file synced with what's on the system.
Please advise how to discover what it is in the existing status file that's causing the problem. I suspect it's related to this (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=276060) but I don't know how to discover which is the offending package. -- Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (1) https://launchpad.net/bugs/50766 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs