[H-GEN] Problem with debian install

[Russell Stuart]

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I am doing a Debian stable onto an i386 machine install using the
LordSuch CD.  Having selected all my packages in dselect and downloaded
them, I now get this error:

Authenticating /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg-doc_1.9.21_all.deb ...
  debsig: Origin Signature check failed. This deb might not be signed.
  dpkg: error processing
    /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg-doc_1.9.21_all.deb (--unpack):
  Verification on package
   /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg-doc_1.9.21_all.deb failed!

The error only happens on about 16 or so packages.  At first I thought
they were corrupted, and tried downloading them from various mirrors,
and turning off proxies, etc.  When that didn't work I went looking, and
eventually found that a debsig-verify on all of the 366 packages under
/var/cache/apt/archives/ fails.

I now suspect I am missing file(s), but I don't know what they are.  A
"dpkg -C" works fine.  The debsig-verify man entry mentions that it
debsig-verify for files under:
  /etc/debsig/policies/*/*.pol
  /usr/share/debsig/keyrings/*/*.gpg
but those directories are empty, and I don't know how to populate them.

To make things more confusing, a "debsig-verify -l any-package.deb"
lists nothing, nor does a "debsig -l any-package.deb".  I gather from
the source of debsig that the signatures are stored within the .deb in a
file whose name contains "gpg".  None of my 366 .deb's contain such a
file.  So perhaps no .deb are signed.  If so why does dpkg insist on
checking the signature?
 
Hints, anyone?

As a side issue, I see that md5 hashs of most files installed live in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/*.md5sums.  Is there some dpkt/apt command that
checks these?

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