OT: Apt-get Problem

[Luke Davis]

Hello folks.

apt-v reports: 0.5.4.

I have some unknown problems with this system, that require me to run
apt-get (and ls, and maybe some other things) under strace (strace -o
/dev/null), to avoid shell hangs, with no program activity.

apt-get is thus aliased to this:

strace -o /dev/null -- apt-get -q

When running:

apt-get install pine

after an update (going from 4.55 to 4.56), I got this bit of oddness.
Anyone have thoughts?  Running as full root...

root at atlas:/usr/doc/update# apt-get install pine
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11  not upgraded.
Need to get 1210kB of archives. After unpacking 32.8kB will be used.
Get:1 http://src.braincells.com woody/ pine 4.56L-1 [1210kB]
Fetched 1210kB in 38s (31.0kB/s)
shell-init: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent
directories: No such file or directory
shell-init: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent
directories: No such file or directory
shell-init: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent
directories: No such file or directory
(Reading database ... 22884 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace pine 4.55L-1 (using
.../archives/pine_4.56L-1_i386.deb) ...Unpacking replacement pine ...
Setting up pine (4.56L-1) ...

root at atlas:/usr/doc/update#