regarding the initial bug... The solution Sven has proposed can be improved, without all the mirror bloat, I think. The sane thing to do would be for debootstrap to default to what's in /etc/apt/sources.list when no mirror is given. This avoids the logistical nightmare of having to make and update $arch.ftp.debian.org foreach architecture. If you're using it in sources.list, it has your architecture. Cheers Brian