make-fai-nfsroot failure (at debootstrap stage)

[Arcady Genkin]

The make-fai-nfsroot stopped working for us, and I can't think of
anything that changed (I know, something must have changed, just can't
put my finger on it).  We are using FAI 2.5.4 under Woody to install
Woody, using a local mirror.  The make-fai-nfsroot command breaks the
following way:

,----
| Creating nfsroot for woody using debootstrap
| dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 2 package `dpkg':
|  error in Version string `': version string is empty
| W: Failure trying to run: chroot /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot dpkg
|       --force-depends --install
|       /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_3.0.2_i386.deb
|       /var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.4.1_i386.deb 
| umount: /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/dev/pts: not found
| umount: /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/dev/shm: not found
| umount: /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/proc/bus/usb: not mounted
| chroot: cannot execute apt-get: No such file or directory
| dpkg-divert: cannot open diversions: No such file or directory
`----

The output of "sh -x make-fai-nfsroot -v", our fai.conf and
sources.list are available from:

  http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~agenkin/tmp/fai/make-fai-nfsroot_out.txt
  http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~agenkin/tmp/fai/fai.conf
  http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~agenkin/tmp/fai/sources.list

I have tried various versions of debootstrap (0.2.41-0.2, 0.2.39.1,
and 0.1.17), and get the same breakage with either of them.

Any ideas would be highly appreciated!
-- 
Arcady Genkin : CDF Systems Administrator
http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~agenkin/contact.html