[oe] Staging does not include all packages

[Chase Douglas]

I'm trying to create an image, yet the resulting tarball is missing  
many things such as busybox and alsamixer. The image bb file is:

IMAGE_BASENAME="9XM"
IMAGE_LINGUAS=""
LICENSE="GPL"
IPKG_INSTALL="task-9xm"
RDEPENDS="${IPKG_INSTALL}"

inherit image_ipk

The task file is:

DESCRIPTION = "9XM Root Filesystem"
PR = "r1"

PACKAGES = "task-9xm"

ALLOW_EMPTY = "1"

PACKAGE_ARCH = "${MACHINE_ARCH}"

MACHINE_FEATURES ?= "kernel26"
DISTRO_FEATURES ?= ""
DISTRO_CORE_PACKAGE ?= "task-base-core-default"

DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS ?= ""
DISTRO_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS ?= ""
MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS ?= ""
MACHINE_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS ?= ""
MACHINE_ESSENTIAL_EXTRA_RDEPENDS ?= ""
MACHINE_ESSENTIAL_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS ?= ""

RDEPENDS = "\
     ${DISTRO_CORE_PACKAGE} \
     kernel \
     udev \
     sysfsutils \
     module-init-tools \
     apm \
     apmd \
     hdparm \
     e2fsprogs \
     e2fsprogs-e2fsck \
     e2fsprogs-mke2fs \
     alsa-utils-alsactl \
     alsa-utils-alsamixer \
     alsa-conf \
     irda-utils \
     usbutils \
     dropbear \
     base-files \
     base-passwd \
     busybox \
     initscripts \
     netbase \
     sysvinit \
     sysvinit-pidof \
     tinylogin \
     modutils-initscripts \
     fuser \
     setserial \
     wireless-tools \
     wpa-supplicant \
     portmap \
     lrzsz \
     ${MACHINE_ESSENTIAL_EXTRA_RDEPENDS} \
     ${MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS} \
     ${DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS}"

RRECOMMENDS = "\
     ${MACHINE_ESSENTIAL_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS} \
     ${MACHINE_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS} \
     ${DISTRO_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS}"

The bitbake version is 1.62. What could be going wrong?

Thanks,
Chase Douglas