With the Qemu version shipped with Debian Stretch, the `man-db` package being installed for Buster in the image triggers many of these errors: qemu: Unsupported syscall: 383 This is a manifestation of the following bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=891109 This is resolved in the current Qemu version shipped with Debian Buster.pull/298/head