“Vanilla GNOME desktop” task doesn't work

[DvoraKing]

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 17.10
Release: 17.10

$ apt-cache policy tasksel (and tasksel-data)
  Installed: 3.34ubuntu9
  Candidate: 3.34ubuntu9

Selecting the "Vanilla GNOME desktop" task during installation using Artful's mini.iso results in only about 80 additional packages being installed, compared to "Ubuntu desktop"'s 1000+. This results in little, if anything, more than a basic minimal install.

Attempting to install it via tasksel post-install makes no difference.

Running "tasksel --task-packages ubuntu-desktop" returns "ubuntu-desktop^", while running "tasksel --task-packages vanilla-gnome-desktop" returns nothing at all.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: tasksel-data 3.34ubuntu9
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-16.19-generic 4.13.4
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Oct 19 22:12:51 2017
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=linux
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: tasksel
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Pietro Gagliardi (andlabs/pietro10) (andlabs)]

Affects me with both the i386 and x86_64 netinstall images of 18.04 — the installation process completes unusually quickly, and upon rebooting, I get dropped to a terminal login. startx is not found.

[Pietro Gagliardi (andlabs/pietro10) (andlabs)]

Update: sudo apt-get install vanilla-gnome-desktop does install everything. However, regardless of whether I also tasksel'd it, I do get an errors encountered while configuring for both vanilla-gnome-default-settings and vanilla-gnome-desktop; dpkg --audit says to dpkg --configure both to resolve it, and that seems to fix it...