Problem with task do_package_update_index_ipk

[Rob Smith <smith@trdeo.co.uk>]

Hello,

I've encountered a strange problem that seems to have arisen from
nowhere. Essentially, when I try to bitbake an image
(omap3-console-image), the process gets completely stuck in the task
do_package_update_index_ipk. Its currently been running for over 4
hours. Yesterday, it was working fine, and would take only a few minutes
for that task to complete.

This morning, all I changed was some configure options for the packages
gst-plugins-base and gst-plugins-good, cleaned them, and then rebuilt,
using these commands:

# bitbake gst-plugins-base -c clean
# bitbake gst-plugins-base
# bitbake gst-plugins-good -c clean
# bitbake gst-plugins-good
# bitbake omap3-console-image

This last command gets stuck in the do_package_update_index_ipk task.
What exactly does this task do, and is there anything I can do to fix
this? Is there an index file that might be corrupt?

Thanks for any help,
Regards
Rob Smih