I got it working with these options: sudo pbuilder --create --mirror http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports \ --debootstrapopts --keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-ports-archive-keyring.gpg \ --debootstrapopts --include=debian-ports-archive-keyring Pbuilder created the base tarball after I issued the above mentioned command. Regards Jeroen