Comment 3 for bug 624229

I found the code that was printing the "deferred extract mass sync" line. The next line was a Sync() call. That appears to be where it was hanging. So I tried the sync command from bash. It hung. Then it dawned on me that I had a corrupted USB drive plugged in (either no partition table to a corrupt one--not sure). As soon as I removed that device, sync began to work and I was able to install packages again.

It doesn't seem right that a corrupt USB drive could cause dpkg to hang. So, I'm not sure if I should close this or keep it open. I guess sync could be modified to handle that situation gracefully, or dpkg could be tweaked to detect a hung sync call. I probably don't have the bandwidth to contribute a patch either way. I'm just glad its working.