Hi, this goes for dpkg-dev as well. I want to suggest that dpkg shall support md5sum's of control.tar.gz and data.tar.gz inside the .deb itself, for instance in debian-binary or a separate file. This would help to recognize defective .debs prior to installation. I had to face such a case recently where a defective libc6 package broke my whole system. The md5sum in Packages is not sufficient, cause it need not be available and is not checked for installation by dpkg -i. Ulf