tag 838388 + patch thanks Ansgar Burchardt writes: > Ah, I'm to blame for that. [1] added `-k` to the options passed to tar > in order to avoid replacing the new symlinks from / to /usr with real > directories. However it looks like tar returns an error when there are > actual file conflicts (as opposed to just symlink vs. directory). > > Only adding -k for newer distributions (i.e. the ones that merged-/usr > supports) should work around the problem.
I pushed a patch implementing this to my debootstrap repository[2]. It worked for Squeeze (w/o merged-/usr) and Stretch (w/ merged-/usr). Ansgar [2] https://github.com/aburch/debootstrap/commit/5bb1da69596828821fe43b3ee63f733e4b8672e7