When I configure some file:// urls and they contain some hundreds of
packages to updates, then in one of three-four times I see a plain
[Working] line from apt-get. No progress visible, i.e. no percentage but
the "file" process is very active. I can strace it, it looks like:

read(0, "600 URI Acquire\nURI: file:/tmp/aptfs/pool/main/m/mapnik/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb\nFilename: /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb\n\n", 64000) = 161
stat("/tmp/aptfs/pool/main/m/mapnik/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1025934, ...}) = 0
open("/tmp/aptfs/pool/main/m/mapnik/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb", O_RDONLY) = 3
fcntl(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)           = 0
...
<dozens of read calls>
...
write(1, "201 URI Done\nURI: file:/tmp/aptfs/pool/main/m/mapnik/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb\nFilename: /tmp/aptfs/pool/main/m/mapnik/libmapnik0.7_0.7.1-6_amd64.deb\nSize: 1025934\nLast-Modified: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 14:50:03 GMT\nMD5-Hash: e2ba83b8812b79097871227944e23940\nMD5Sum-Hash: e2ba83b8812b79097871227944e23940\nSHA1-Hash: 407a4f803c0d41a3e17c3dc8e8907b42642a2fd8\nSHA256-Hash: 99a60f844ae6f2b119c5658b4b1ac20ac6faf95b69b9c726668bd593be2e2bcf\n\n", 434) = 434
close(3)

That is okay and looks reasonable but PLEASE display the progress.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it looks like it gets stuck for
minutes (because of the slow filesystem where it reads from).

Regards,
Eduard.