Comment 4 for bug 1115465

I ran into this problem on Ubuntu 12.04, for some reason, while trying to "apt-get install virt-manager". After issuing this dpkg purge command with the "--force-remove-reinstreq" option, debootstrap was removed and I was able to successfully run "apt-get install virt-manager" with no complaints. Of course, virt-manager isn't actually dependent on debootstrap, so I just put this here for what it's worth. It may help if you can't install anything due to this one broken package.

james@xxxxxx:/var/log$ sudo dpkg -P --force-remove-reinstreq debootstrap
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal.
(Reading database ...
dpkg: warning: files list file for package `debootstrap' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed.
(Reading database ... 462342 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing debootstrap ...
james@xxxxxx:/var/log$