I now installed a xenial system (LPAR) from scratch and tested/verified with 3.4.1+dfsg-1ubuntu4.1 from proposed and other than I had to use a slightly different (legacy) syntax in the tools I had the same results.
Afterwards I dist-upgraded that system to bionic and did the verification one again there with 3.9.0+dfsg-0ubuntu1.4 (proposed). With another slight adjustment in the syntax it worked, too.
(looks like the tool syntax is stable with 3.1x, but not necessarily before)
I now installed a xenial system (LPAR) from scratch and tested/verified with 3.4.1+dfsg- 1ubuntu4. 1 from proposed and other than I had to use a slightly different (legacy) syntax in the tools I had the same results.
Afterwards I dist-upgraded that system to bionic and did the verification one again there with 3.9.0+dfsg- 0ubuntu1. 4 (proposed). With another slight adjustment in the syntax it worked, too.
(looks like the tool syntax is stable with 3.1x, but not necessarily before)
I'm adjusting the tags accordingly ...