Error trying to run apt-get

Was wondering if anyone has a workaround for this problem other than uninstalling and reinstalling. I'm trying to upgrade a package and get this error. The software involved doesn't seem to be one that I can uninstall without uninstalling a bunch of things I'd rather not uninstall to reinstall. See error at the bottom of this upgrade command. The same happens when I just try an install. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to touch a 777 file for /usr/ sbin/add-shell but I still get that error. I pretty much can't run any upgrade, I get the same error. I try the upgrade by itself then on debianutils.

# uname -a

Linux xena 2.6.7-1-386 #1 Thu Jul 8 05:08:04 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux

# apt-get upgrade

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back:   apt apt-utils aptitude bind9-host dnsutils foomatic-filters-ppds hpijs
  initscripts libblkid1 libfam0c102 libldap2 libsasl2 lilo mount mutt nessus
  nessusd netatalk nfs-common nfs-kernel-server nmap pciutils   postgresql-client postgresql-doc ppp pppoeconf rmail sendmail sendmail-base
  sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda spamassassin ssh sysvinit tasksel
  util-linux xpdf-common xpdf-utils
The following packages will be upgraded:   adduser analog apache apache-common apache2-utils at base-passwd bash
  bsdmainutils bsdutils console-common console-tools cpio cron dash   debianutils desktop-file-utils dhcp-client diff discover1 dselect e2fslibs
  e2fsprogs eject fdutils file findutils gettext-base grep groff-base gzip
  hostname ifupdown info iptables iputils-ping klogd libacl1 libattr1   libauthen-pam-perl libbz2-1.0 libc-client2002edebian libcomerr2 libconsole
  libdb1-compat libdb3 libdb4.2 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbd-pg-perl libdbi-perl
  libdigest-sha1-perl libdiscover1 libgd2-noxpm libgdbm3 libglib1.2   libgnome-desktop-2 libgtk1.2 libgtk2.0-bin libhtml-parser-perl libidn11
  liblocale-gettext-perl liblockfile1 liblzo1 libmagic1 libnasl2 libnessus2
  libnet-ssleay-perl libpcre3 libpg-perl libslp1 libssl0.9.7   libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtextwrap1 libusb-0.1-4 libuuid1
  libwrap0 libxp6 libzzip-0-12 login logrotate lynx m4 mailagent mailx make
  man-db mlock module-init-tools modutils nano ncurses-base ncurses- bin
  nessus-plugins netcat nvi openssl passwd patch php4-common portmap pppconfig
  pppoe procmail procps psmisc qpopper samba-doc sed setserial   shared-mime-info spamc sysklogd tar tcpd telnet usbutils uw-imapd 118 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 39 not upgraded. 63 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/37.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 16.0MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Extracting templates from packages: 100% Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 38049 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace debianutils 2.8.4 (using .../ debianutils_2.21_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement debianutils ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/ debianutils_2.21_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/sbin/add-shell', which is also in package passwd
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing:  /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_2.21_i386.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

# apt-get upgrade debianutils

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back:   apt apt-utils aptitude bind9-host dnsutils foomatic-filters-ppds hpijs
  initscripts libblkid1 libfam0c102 libldap2 libsasl2 lilo mount mutt nessus
  nessusd netatalk nfs-common nfs-kernel-server nmap pciutils   postgresql-client postgresql-doc ppp pppoeconf rmail sendmail sendmail-base
  sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda spamassassin ssh sysvinit tasksel
  util-linux xpdf-common xpdf-utils
The following packages will be upgraded:   adduser analog apache apache-common apache2-utils at base-passwd bash
  bsdmainutils bsdutils console-common console-tools cpio cron dash   debianutils desktop-file-utils dhcp-client diff discover1 dselect e2fslibs
  e2fsprogs eject fdutils file findutils gettext-base grep groff-base gzip
  hostname ifupdown info iptables iputils-ping klogd libacl1 libattr1   libauthen-pam-perl libbz2-1.0 libc-client2002edebian libcomerr2 libconsole
  libdb1-compat libdb3 libdb4.2 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbd-pg-perl libdbi-perl
  libdigest-sha1-perl libdiscover1 libgd2-noxpm libgdbm3 libglib1.2   libgnome-desktop-2 libgtk1.2 libgtk2.0-bin libhtml-parser-perl libidn11
  liblocale-gettext-perl liblockfile1 liblzo1 libmagic1 libnasl2 libnessus2
  libnet-ssleay-perl libpcre3 libpg-perl libslp1 libssl0.9.7   libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtextwrap1 libusb-0.1-4 libuuid1
  libwrap0 libxp6 libzzip-0-12 login logrotate lynx m4 mailagent mailx make
  man-db mlock module-init-tools modutils nano ncurses-base ncurses- bin
  nessus-plugins netcat nvi openssl passwd patch php4-common portmap pppconfig
  pppoe procmail procps psmisc qpopper samba-doc sed setserial   shared-mime-info spamc sysklogd tar tcpd telnet usbutils uw-imapd

118 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 39 not upgraded. 63 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/37.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 16.0MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Extracting templates from packages: 100% Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 38049 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace debianutils 2.8.4 (using .../ debianutils_2.21_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement debianutils ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/ debianutils_2.21_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/sbin/add-shell', which is also in package passwd
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing:  /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_2.21_i386.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

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