synaptic returns "segmentation fault"

[HatGuy]

CUPS reports (at last!) that a possible cause of my printing problems is fixed in CUPS 1.2.11.

Knoppix .5.1.1 shipped with CUPS 1.2.7, so I tried my first ever package upgrade, with synaptic.

Nice GUI! :D But after running:
Edit > Reload Package Information (no problem),
marking the CUPS files for upgrade, and
Apply,
the details window reported that Gnome was not installed and raised
E: ... segmentation error!
Run apt-get --configure -a to correct

Running apt-get --configure -a got another segmentation fault.

A thread recommended running trace on apt-get, which produced some files not found (as far as I can see, which isn't very; you're welcome to see the log.

Then I tried apt-get, dselect, and dpkg, and got the same error. (all the apt-xxx. programs that go beyond reporting are affected).

I even tried rpm. It seems to work, but I can't make heads or tails of the instructions. What, for example, has to be in the tar ball you feed to rpm-build? The files the instructions say you need are in there (I looked!), but rpm-builder said it couldn't find them.

How can I reinstall apt-xxx without using apt-get, and then upgrade CUPS?

Thanks!

HatGuy