Comment 6 for bug 882254

/etc/rc.local is run from /etc/init.d/rc.local via the /etc/rc2.d/S99rc.local symlink, which is all part of the initscripts package. Are these files missing from your system for some reason? Or, like Julien, is your /etc/rc.local not executable? (I think that would be considered a configuration error - /etc/rc.local has always been expected to be a script, AFAIK.)