htttp://hands.com/~lkcl/dpkg_strace_851984_bug.tgz ah. we now have a candidate for a reassign: after doing that strace i tried doing "apt-get install libavdevice57" (one of the dependencies of blender) and that *worked*. so, it's *only* when doing "apt-get build-dep" that the dpkg bug-out occurs.... making this *not* a dpkg bug but something related to apt-get.
which i'll now upgrade... ... and test again. l.
