I looked into this issue, and also discussed with mfo. The sos code that fails compilation due to the python 3.6 package not yet being installed is, @staticmethod def _query_address(url: str) -> HTTPResponse: """ Query the given url address with headers required by Google Metadata Server. """ try: req = request.Request(url, headers={'Metadata-Flavor': 'Google'}) response = request.urlopen(req) except URLError as err: raise RuntimeError( "Failed to communicate with Metadata Server: " + str(err)) if response.code != 200: raise RuntimeError( f"Failed to communicate with Metadata Server " <--- f"(code: {response.code}): " + response.read().decode()) <---- return response We have decided to hold off the 4.5.6 release on bionic since 4.5.6 has many more plugins using f strings. For this version, it's just the gcp plugin that has f strings in the bionic sos. But 4.5.6 source has more than hundred instances (https://pastebin.canonical.com/p/8DpdjwWKM4/) Looking further, The generated postinst tries to build py3compile sosreport, (Thanks mfo for this info!) $ pull-lp-debs sosreport bionic 4.4-1ubuntu0.18.04.1 Found sosreport 4.4-1ubuntu0.18.04.1 in bionic Downloading sosreport_4.4-1ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb from archive.ubuntu.com (0.291 MiB) [=====================================================>]100% :~/Downloads/dpkgtest$ mkdir ext :~/Downloads/dpkgtest$ dpkg-deb -e ext/ sosreport_4.4-1ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb :~/Downloads/dpkgtest$ dpkg-deb -e sosreport_4.4-1ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb ext/ :~/Downloads/dpkgtest$ cd ext/ :~/Downloads/dpkgtest/ext$ ls conffiles control md5sums postinst prerm :~/Downloads/dpkgtest/ext$ cat postinst #!/bin/sh set -e # Automatically added by dh_python3: if which py3compile >/dev/null 2>&1; then py3compile -p sosreport <---- fi # End automatically added section There's a couple of things we can do for a fix. Either have the depends in the control file using something like python3 (>= 3.6.5-3) which might be an easier fix, or try to generate a check additionally in the postinst that dh_python generates, that does not compile sos if the version is bionic and python 3.6 isn't available. The series after bionic seem fine, # rmadison python3 python3 | 3.4.0-0ubuntu2 | trusty | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el python3 | 3.5.1-3 | xenial | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el, s390x python3 | 3.6.5-3 | bionic | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x python3 | 3.6.7-1~18.04 | bionic-updates | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x python3 | 3.8.2-0ubuntu2 | focal | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.10.4-0ubuntu2 | jammy | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.10.6-1~22.04 | jammy-security | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.10.6-1~22.04 | jammy-updates | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.11.2-1 | lunar | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.11.4-5 | mantic | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x python3 | 3.11.4-5 | noble | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x