How to "manually fix this package" (aptitude error)?

Question

Whenever I try to aptitude install something I get this error:

E: I wasn't able to locate a file for the libxmlrpc-c3 package. 
This might   mean you need to manually fix this package. (due to missing arch)
Writing extended state information... Done
E: I wasn't able to locate a file for the libxmlrpc-c3 package. 
This might   mean you need to manually fix this package. (due to missing arch)
E: Internal error: couldn't generate list of packages to download

I aptitude removed and deleted the package from /var/cache/apt/archive, but get the same error when I try again.

This is the from dpkg/status:

Package: libxmlrpc-c3
Status: deinstall reinstreq half-installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Version: 1.06.27-1.1

This is the from lsb_release -a; uname -a; dpkg-architecture; apt-cache policy ttf-mscorefonts-installer:

DEB_BUILD_ARCH=i386
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_CPU=i386
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_BITS=32
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU=i486
DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=i486-linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_ARCH=i386
DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_HOST_ARCH_CPU=i386
DEB_HOST_ARCH_BITS=32
DEB_HOST_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_HOST_GNU_CPU=i486
DEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE=i486-linux-gnu
ttf-mscorefonts-installer:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2.7
  Version table:
     2.7 0
        500 http://ftp.cn.debian.org lenny/contrib Packages

How do I fix this error?

Solution

The dpkg man page has

PACKAGE FLAGS reinst-required A package marked reinst-required is broken and requires reinstallation. These packages cannot be removed, unless forced with option --force-remove-reinstreq.

So try

dpkg --force-remove-reinstreq --remove libxmlrpc-c3

Alternatively, you can use --purge instead of --remove if you want to remove the configuration files as well, since --remove won't remove them.

Comments

[cikatomo]

it worked and I learned something new

[vmassuchetto]

I also had to --purge the problematic package for install to work again.