Bug#386244: tasksel 'Desktop environment' task hangs

[Chris Lale <chrislale@untrammelled.co.uk>]

Package: tasksel
Version: 2.53
Severity: normal

Selecting 'Desktop environment' (in Etch Testing) causes tasksel to 
hang. (There is a flashing cursor at the bottom left-hand corner of the 
console.) If 'Desktop
environment' is selected from within the Etch beta-3 
Debian-installer, the installation fails. I have replicated the problem 
on a Thinkpad T20 laptop and on the PC detailed below using qemu.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-2-486
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages tasksel depends on:
ii  aptitude                      0.4.2-1    terminal-based apt frontend
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.3      Debian configuration management sy
ii  liblocale-gettext-perl        1.05-1     Using libc functions for internati
ii  tasksel-data                  2.53       Official tasks used for installati

tasksel recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
  tasksel/title:
  tasksel/first:
  tasksel/tasks: