Don't panic.
If the system is letting you log in, then no permanent damage is done (i.e. you DON'T need to reinstall everything.) Here's what to do: See if you have the 'script' command available; it is in a base package, but onot priority essential, so you may or may not have it. If you don't have it, then download the bsdutils_???.deb (I don't know the version) from the main/binary-i386/basesubdir of your favorite debian distribution (you can try 'find /cdrom -name 'bsduti*'' to see if its on the cdrom, after you mount the cdrom on /cdrom). Once you have script available ( it's /usr/bin/script), run it as root, then go into dselect and re-run the dselect 'configure' option'. Type 'exit' to kill the shell that script started, and you will see a message that the output file is 'typescript'. Mail this file to the debian-user list, and we will comment on how to fix things. Note that, depending on what access emthod you chose in dselect, you may have to iterate the 'install' option a few times before everything will install successfully. This is fixed with apt, since apt knows what order to isntall things in. The older install methods install things in the wrong order, so you have to choose 'install' over and over. But, do the script thing. mail it in, and we will try to help you. Carl
