Comment 13 for bug 205079

For what it's worth, I seem to have worked around it with the following commands:

cd /var/cache/apt/archives
sudo dpkg -i libgcc1_1%3a4.2.3-2ubuntu4_i386.deb libc6_2.7-9ubuntu2_i386.deb

Neither libc6 nor libgcc1 would install on its own; they both needed to be installed in a single "dpkg -i" command.

After that, "apt-get -f install" was complaining about debconf. Again, multiple packages needed to be installed simultaneously:

sudo dpkg -i debconf* liblocale-gettext-perl_* perl-base_*

And after those, "apt-get -f install" seemed okay. Now continuing with "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" (crossing fingers)...

[Note: I'm not, by any means, an expert or even a professional at this; consider waiting for a second opinion before forcing installs of packages.]