[15:39] cjwatson: I can't find any `Task` field in the `/var/lib/dpkg/status` paragraphs, but I did notice that `grep-dctrl -FPriority "important" /var/lib/dpkg/status` gives me a list of 106 pretty important-looking packages. [15:41] You'll need Priority: required too [15:41] But I can't help much more here, in the middle of some upgrade firefighting [15:47] understood, see you on the other side [21:10] update: here's what I got working: `debootstrap --print-debs --variant=minbase bionic "$(mktemp -dt target.XXXXXX)" | xargs dpkg --status >./fake/var/lib/dpkg/status`