Okay, this is going to be fun. Your box is fairly screwed, so the worst problem is that you screw it harder, but I take no responsibility for you doing that following this advice. The problem is either that the dpkg package didn't install correctly, or the metadata is corrupt.
Let's deal with the first problem. Debian packages are just an ar file of two tar files. You can extract them by hand if you really need to. Try the following:
# cd /tmp
# ar x /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_i386.deb
# cd /
# tar -xzvf /tmp/data.tar.gz
This should extract the files from the package and install them on the system. We should probably tell dpkg that the package is installed. Find the /var/lib/dpkg/status file, and find a line that says:
Package: dpkg
Then edit the Status line to say:
Status: install ok installed
and change the version to say:
Version: 1.13.26
Hopefully now, dpkg should be working. If it is, I would reinstall dpkg, so dpkg knows what files the dpkg package has installed.
# dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_i386.deb
If it's a metadata file that's become corrupt, they're just plain text files, so you can edit them. I would suggest using dpkg in debug more or strace to see if you can find out which file in particular is broken.
# dpkg --debug=2001 -i /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_i386.deb
# strace -efile -f dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_i386.deb
(Check out dpkg --debug=help to find out what 2001 means)
If the status file is corrupt, there is a status-old file you could use as a backup.
You need to specify the frontend as `noninteractive' and it will save your current settings.
dpkg-reconfigure will take the current system settings as gospel, so simply change your timezone the way you would normally and run it with the non-interactive flag
e.g. for me to change to "Europe/Dublin" where I am:
# echo "Europe/Dublin" > /etc/timezone
# dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
Obviously this allows you to use puppet/cfengine as you like to distribute /etc/timezone also.
EDIT:
after @gertvdijk comment pointing to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/1554806 and @scruss answer you will probably have to do it like this in most modern distributions:
$ sudo ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Dublin /etc/localtime
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
Best Answer
Your question is quite vague, but the problem is in this:
This means that the file
/lib/firmware/RTL8192SU/rtl8192sfw.bin
is part of these packages:pve-firmware_1.0-14_all
firmware-realtek 0.28+squeeze1
If you don't need the alternate, just remove it:
Be careful when you try this: look at anything else that APT wants to remove, in case it is a set of important items like GNOME or worse.
Otherwise, you can force the package to overwrite the file with:
Note that this will overwrite the file, and if you rely on the package
firmware-realtek 0.28+squeeze1
working and being intact, it might not. Your "new" version of the file might be older or newer and things may react badly; only do this last command if you know what you are doing.