this is a new and interesting problem i've never seen before.after a dpkg installation failure i'm left with a file i can't do a thing about, its presence blocks any dpkg usage and ldconfig too. any ideas how i can remove this file or alter its permissions?

root@crystaltree:~# ls -l /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
p-w-r-Srwx 9781 2801277591 676399779 3409598200 2038-05-23 22:55 /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
root@crystaltree:~# rm /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
rm: cannot remove `/usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2': Operation not permitted
root@crystaltree:~# chown root.root /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
chown: changing ownership of `/usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2': Operation not permitted
root@crystaltree:~# chmod -s /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
chmod: changing permissions of `/usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2': Operation not permitted
root@crystaltree:~# chmod 0777 /usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2
chmod: changing permissions of `/usr/lib/libgmime-2.0.so.2': Operation not permitted

It seems to be a pipe, maybe some process has it still allocated. You could search for the process and kill it, or reboot your machine if possible. After that you should be able to remove the file.

thanks for the reply. rebooting didnt change the state of the file. i managed to eventually fix by forcing a fsck in single user mode. then fsck became stuck in an automatic filesystem checking loop at boot, repeatedly fixing problems on the root partition and forcing reboot. using a boot floppy i ran a few more fsck and eventually managed to get a clean filesystem with the offending file fixed.