synaptic reload takes forever

[Brendan Miller]

Downloading and installing packages works in a reasonable amount of
time, but reloading takes at least an hour, and synaptic completely
freazes up during that time.

I launch from the terminal I get output like this:
Convert: tslib 1.0-7
Convert: unixodbc 2.2.11-16
Convert: wine 1.0.1-2
Error: Binary / source version mismatch, skipping.
Convert: xaw3d 1.5+E-17
Convert: xft 2.1.13-3
Convert: zlib 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13
Error: Binary / source version mismatch, skipping.
Get: http://ftp.debian.org sid/main Sources
Get: http://ftp.debian.org sid/contrib Sources
Get: http://ftp.debian.org sid/non-free Sources
Convert: acl 2.2.47-2
Convert: alsa-lib 1.0.20-2
Convert: arts 1.5.9-3
Convert: atk1.0 1.26.0-1
Convert: at-spi 1.26.0-1
Convert: attr 1:2.4.43-2


Between each convert message there's like a 20 second delay. What they
hell is it doing?

Brendan