How do I force apt-get to update the state of package versions?

I installed Natty Narwhal last night, and cam across a problem with update manager. I had initially instructed update manager to "Install updates", but the dialog that popped up stayed on "waiting..." with no progress for over 5 minutes. I pressed cancel, hoping to exit Update Manager and try again, but after the Update Manger updated, it claims I have a completely updated system, with no packages left to install. When Update Manager first popped up after installation, I had approx. 84.

How can I force apt-get (as I get the same "no updates" message there) to re-build the status of all my packages?

I tried the solution below with sudo dpkg --configure -a, but that ran without output, and I'm still not sure the packages advertised previously have been installed. sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade only gave me some updates to Chromium.

2 Answers

Copy and paste sudo dpkg --configure -a into the Terminal.

Then paste sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

You can also try:sudo apt-get install -f to fix broken dependencies.

Found an answer on a separate question:

dpkg does a regular backup of the complete package status of the system to /var/backups/dpkg.status.*.gz. If you think your package status if out of sync with the actual packages installed, you can replace the status file at /var/lib/dpkg/status with the status file contained in the backup. Run the following commands with sudo:

cp /var/lib/dpkg/status /var/lib/dpkg/status.bak
cp /var/backups/dpkg.status.*.gz /var/lib/dpkg/
gunzip -d /var/lib/dpkg/dpkg.status.*.gz
mv /var/lib/dpkg/dpkg.status.* /var/lib/dpkg/status

You should now be able to do an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to update to the most recent packages.