[expert] desktop updater not working?

[Dan Swartzendruber]

I just installed 6.1 mandrake on my new K7.  So it comes up and I click on
the easy update icon on the desktop.  It shows me a bunch of packages, and
I select them all.  It fetches them.  It installs them.  It says it is
updating the list of installed packages.  Yet, if I run the updater again,
I see the exact same list of packages!  This worked a couple of months ago
on my old PPro-180, but then again, I know I didn't configure everything
exactly the same.  Any ideas?