Making apt-get powercut-proof

[Andrew Sayers]

A friend of mine was upgrading to Hardy, and (so far as we can tell)
there was a power cut while it was halfway through, which left his
system in a not-especially-useful state.  I think the best solution is
to have a /etc/init.d/{apt-get|dpkg} script that checks for
half-finished installs, and restarts them if necessary.  If so, which
(or both) would be better, and is there anyone here that knows enough
about the two to suggest a complete set of commands that need to be run?
 Also, is this something we should be doing in an Ubuntu-specific way
(e.g. from X), or should I take this idea to Debian?

	- Andrew Sayers