After trying to remove a very broken Hello World App: /etc/apt/sources.list.d # apt-get remove hello-world-app Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: hello-world-app 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 7 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 246kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y dpkg: error processing hello-world-app (--remove): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting a removal. Errors were encountered while processing: hello-world-app E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) ... I attempted to reinstall as suggested with these results: /etc/apt/sources.list.d # apt-get install hello-world-app Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done hello-world-app is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B/21.2kB of archives. After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used. WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! hello-world-app Install these packages without verification [y/N]? y Selecting previously deselected package hello-world-app. (Reading database ... 17097 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace hello-world-app 0.7 (using .../hello-world-app_0.7_armel.deb) ... Unpacking replacement hello-world-app ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/hello-world-app.postrm: line 11: syntax error: "(" unexpected dpkg: warning - old post-removal script returned error exit status 2 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/postrm: line 11: syntax error: "(" unexpected dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/hello-world-app_0.7_armel.deb (--unpack): subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 2 /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/postrm: line 11: syntax error: "(" unexpected dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/hello-world-app_0.7_armel.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)