I cannot reproduce this issue, there can be something wrong with your environment.
You can try it fresh yourself with e.g sudo vmdebootstrap --verbose --distribution jessie --image jessie.img --size 3G --package epubcheck --hostname epub --user epub/epub --sudo --grub --systemd-networkd --enable-dhcp --configure-apt --arch=i386 to create Debian Jessie image, and then sudo qemu-system-i386 -machine accel=kvm:tcg -m 1024 -smp 2 -drive file=jessie.img,format=raw to run it. Let me know if you need help and/or I can close this issue. Eugene
