Going through the installed packages list with dpkg -l , I saw that gcc hadn't yet been configured properly. Of course I have already compiled kernel #1.3.75 five times, so it must be fairly well configured...
When I checked by trying to configure gcc, the message states an error, since the file /usr/info/cpp.info.gz is missing. This is another example of a nonessential file causing dpkg to not work right. I'm still not sure how to get dpkg to say it _is_ configured, but apparently it isn't important. A comment: Shouldn't the definitive manpage be that in the package itself? Alan Davis
