make-fai-repository broken, bootcd now okay

[Mark Hedges]

Thanks for your help, the bootcd finally did boot and fai started.
Except that it tried to mount the NFS server, and no packages made
it into the cd repository.

Because my fai server is on a sarge machine, but I'm installing woody,
I had to add '-f $NFSROOT/var/lib/dpkg/status' to dpkg-awk calls in
calculate_essential().  (I did use a kernel compiled under woody.)
This was the only change I made to a fresh copy of make-fai-repository.
It seems to build the packages list correctly, but then at download:

   0 packages upgraded, 732 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not 
upgraded.
   Need to get 0B/500MB of archives. After unpacking 1318MB will be used.
   Download complete and in download only mode

But the tmp directory listed with -d flag has no packages at all in 
archives.
The 'partial' directories are empty.

'Need to get 0B/500MB of archives'... it thinks they are all already there?
But it just created the directory, and it is empty.

I tried all kinds of flags for apt-get but nothing was any better than the
script default, and found no more clues.  APT_OPTIONS is:

-t woody \
-o Dir::Etc::sourcelist=/var/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/apt/sources.list \
-o Dir::Etc::preferences=/var/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/apt/preferences \
-o Dir::State::status=/dev/null \
-o Dir::Cache=/tmp/make-fai-repository.1057170734 \
-o Dir::State=/tmp/make-fai-repository.1057170734 \
-o Dir::Cache::Archives=/tmp/make-fai-repository.1057170734/archives \
-o Dir::State::Lists=/tmp/make-fai-repository.1057170734/lists \

This is crazy.  I tried the commands by hand, too.  apt-get updates okay,
and when I try to install a test package like 'gcc' it figures out all
the dependencies and everything.  pkgcache.bin and the Packages/Releases
lists are all apparently correct.  Using the -s flag even lists 'Inst'
and 'Conf' directives for all the right packages.  But it downloads nothing
to the archives/partial directory.

All the other parts of make-fai-repository seem to work okay.  It generates
the pool directories appropriately, etc.  But there is nothing ready to 
copy.

Where could I look for clues?

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