I needed to run debsums on everything on one of my boxes today. A hack from the net helped me get it going…
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
apt-get --download-only \
--reinstall install `debsums -l`
debsums --generate=keep,nocheck *.deb
Since I had a full local Debian mirror and my apt was set up to use it, I had to temporarily change /etc/apt/sources.list to get apt-get to do what was wanted. Then it worked like a charm, and I was able to finish with debsums -c and find out that everything was fine except what wasn't.
Thanks Arthur de Jong from 2005! (B)