Hi,
I encountered a similar problem with pbuilder 0.208ubuntu1,
and the attached patch fixed it for me.
Tim
--- /usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-buildpackage~ 2012-03-14 15:03:46.000000000 +0000
+++ /usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-buildpackage 2014-01-08 14:53:25.991992079 +0000
@@ -36,9 +36,9 @@
# LD_PRELOAD: Normal users don't have write access to build
# environment, so cowdancer shouldn't have to run, and fakeroot
# should be running later, so it shouldn't matter.
- # LOGNAME: set this to shut up some tools.
+ # LOGNAME and USER: set this to shut up some tools.
# su -p : switch to user preserving env vars, we need most of them.
- SUTOUSER="env LD_PRELOAD= LOGNAME=$BUILDUSERNAME su -p $BUILDUSERNAME"
+ SUTOUSER="env LD_PRELOAD= LOGNAME=$BUILDUSERNAME USER=$BUILDUSERNAME su -p $BUILDUSERNAME"
DEBBUILDOPTS="${DEBBUILDOPTS:+$DEBBUILDOPTS }-rfakeroot"
EXTRAPACKAGES="${EXTRAPACKAGES} fakeroot"
log "I: using fakeroot in build."
