Init respawning too fast after failed upgrade.

["Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk>]

HELP !!

A while ago, I upgraded to woody and caused mayhem.  Somehow I managed to
lose tar and a couple of other essentials.  No problem - reinstall the
potato bootdisks 2.2.9 - get the base system running including tar.

So I reinstalled base on a _running_ debian system.  Now I either have:

debconf asking the same questions over and over on VT 1 and looping

or

deinstall debconf and have an endless stream of

/bin/sh /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: No such file or directory (and)

Init 1 spawning too fast : disabled for 5 minutes

I've also lost VT 4 through VT 6.

I can't kill Id "1" unless I'm in single user mode.

Any clues ?? Joey ???

Thanks, from a befuddled 

Andy