[Edgy] qemu-make-debian-root hasn't worked since Debian Sarge, and not even then

Binary package hint: qemu

 0.8.2-0ubuntu1 installs /usr/sbin/qemu-make-debian-root, a script to debootstrap a working Debian system into a disk image that can be used in qemu. It fails first because of a reference to libsigc++-1.2-5c102, a package that existed in Debian Sarge, but not Debian Sid or Etch, let alone Ubuntu Edgy.

The script includes this line:

debootstrap --exclude=syslinux,at,exim,mailx,libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2,mbr,setserial,fdutils,info,ipchains,iptables,lilo,pcmcia-cs,ppp,pppoe,ppp
oeconf,pppconfig,wget,telnet,cron,logrotate,exim4,exim4-base,exim4-config,exim4-daemon-light,pciutils,modconf,tasksel --include=aptitude,libsigc++-1.2-5c102 $DISTRO /tmp/mount.$$ $URL

That causes this failure when trying to build sid, etch or edgy:

E: Couldn't find these debs: libsigc++-1.2-5c102

I tried removing the --exclude and --include parameters from the debootstrap, and also a subsequent dpkg-remove line that also caused dependency problems. Then, with this invocation:

sudo qemu-make-debian-root 200 edgy http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy

the debootstrap looked good, but the script concluded thus:

I: Configuring pcmciautils...
I: Configuring console-setup...
I: Configuring console-tools...
I: Configuring ubuntu-minimal...
I: Base system installed successfully.
/usr/sbin/qemu-make-debian-root: 81: cannot open /tmp/mount.2285/etc/inittab: No such file
409185+0 records in
409185+0 records out
209502720 bytes (210 MB) copied, 2.11577 seconds, 99.0 MB/s
Warning: edgy is not a block device
Disk edgy: cannot get geometry

Disk edgy: 406 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
  for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 406/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
    edgy1 1 192779 192779 83 Linux
    edgy2 0 - 0 0 Empty
    edgy3 0 - 0 0 Empty
    edgy4 0 - 0 0 Empty
New situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
    edgy1 63 409247 409185 83 Linux
    edgy2 0 - 0 0 Empty
    edgy3 0 - 0 0 Empty
    edgy4 0 - 0 0 Empty
Warning: no primary partition is marked bootable (active)
This does not matter for LILO, but the DOS MBR will not boot this disk.
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...
BLKRRPART: Inappropriate ioctl for device

If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say, then use dd(1)
to zero the first 512 bytes: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1
(See fdisk(8).)
Done.

--
It did result in a file called edgy, but trying to use that in qemu resulted in qemu hanging after saying "Booting from Hard Disk..."

Making a Debian Sid image (with an unmodified qemu-make-debian-root) resulted in the same messages and result.

Finally, the script is written to create only the root user, and assigns the password 'root', i.e., it results in an installation unlike any conventional Ubuntu installation (though one could get the same results with debootstrap.) Perhaps an appropriate Ubuntuization would be to prompt for a login name and password, and to create an ordinary user in sudoers.