Strange broken behaviour from apt.

[Debian User <johnpf@atnet.net.au>]

Hello,

I've just done an upgrade from a base-only potato (r2 I think) to woddy,
and it has _not_ been pleasant.

For some reason the initial dist-upgrade worked, but afetr I started to
get packages to be useful (XFree4, gnome etc) apt started to only get
the 1st file it wants. From then on it just times out.

I had to download files individually to install, like this:

    apt-get intall this that theotherthing

gets 'this' then sits 'waiting for file" then timesout.

    apt-get install this that theotherthing

gets 'that' and then starts hanging, I get imaptient and ^C it.

    apt-get install this that theotherthing

gets 'theotherthing' and installs all 3 packages.

Unfortunatly I wanted about 200 packages (task-c++-dev,
task-gnome-whatever etc), so there went my day.

Can anyone shed any light on this (note that I am not convinced that the
ISP has their proxy set up right) and more importantly help me avoid
this ever happening again.

Oh, btw, I was using ftp.us.debian.org as it appears that all the
Australian mirrors are either (1) terribly out of date, or (2) dont
mirror testing and unstable.

Thanks,

John P Foster