debootstrap 1.0.8 foreign arm second stage failure

[p <pmeloy@shaw.ca>]

I'm trying to get debian installed on an arm board but both debootstrap
and cdebootstrap fail due to the same basic problem.

I create the first stage on the 686 host with

sudo debootstrap --foreign --arch arm etch debarm
http:ftp.us.debian.org/debian/

(I've also tried sid)

This seems to be ok. I then copy the results to SD card with

sudo cp -p -R debarm/*

On the arm board I mount the ext2 SD card at /mnt/sd and

chroot /mnt/sd/ /bin/bash

/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

>From there I see 

I: Installing core packages...
W: Failure trying to run: chroot / dpkg --force-depends --install
var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.7-10_arm.deb

A check of the debootstrap.log shows the following (after only three
packages)

Setting up libc6 (2.7-10) ...
/usr/share/debconf/confmodule: line 15: /usr/lib/cdebconf/debconf: No
such file or directory
dpkg: error processing libc6 (--install):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
libc6
/debootstrap/functions: line 5: echo: write error: Broken pipe

when I use cdedebconf instead, the error is at a different point
(debconf and passwd) but it is the same non-existent cdebconf/ directory
problem.