Ubiquity crashed while installing grub

[Jérôme G]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 RC, Ubiquity crashed in the last step when it runs grub-installer

The problems seems to come from the failed generation of initrd.

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.5
Package: ubiquity 1.10.7
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity gtk_ui
ProcEnviron: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/proc/10617/environ'
PythonArgs: ['/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity', 'gtk_ui']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity crashed with InstallStepError in configure_bootloader()
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic i686
UserGroups:

[Jérôme G (jgoudey)]

After running Ubiquity, I can see that several partitions are attached to the same mount point.
I am actually trying to install Intrepid on a separate partition (/dev/sda10), having already Gutsy installed on another (/dev/sda5). Once ubiquity has crashed, /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda10 are both mounted on /target. See attached screenshot

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Yes, this does seem to be due to the incorrect mount points, which I think must have been due to pilot error in the partitioner (I've never heard of this before, and multiboot setups like this are quite common). Still, grub-installer clearly shouldn't fail in this case - I'll get that fixed.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Fixed upstream for grub-installer 1.38.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package grub-installer - 1.38ubuntu1

---------------
grub-installer (1.38ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * Resynchronise with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - Show the grub menu and raise the menu timeout if other operating
      systems are installed (only for GRUB Legacy right now).
    - Ask grub-installer/only_debian at medium priority.
    - Remove splash boot parameter unless debian-installer/framebuffer=true.
    - If / or /boot are on a removable device, install GRUB there by
      default.
    - Only mount /target/proc if it isn't already mounted.
    - Support setting OVERRIDE_UNSUPPORTED_OS in the environment to force
      grub-installer to use its default MBR selection method despite there
      being unsupported operating systems on the disk.
    - Unless grub-installer/make_active is preseeded to false, mark the
      partition to which GRUB is being installed as bootable, or failing
      that the first available primary partition on the disk to which GRUB
      is being installed.
    - Support grub-installer/bootdev_directory preseeding to make use of the
      relative path feature of grub4dos, so that we can point grub4dos at
      part of a disk for Wubi. Setting this disables normal grub
      installation, but still generates a device.map; it also hides the
      menu.
    - Handle cases where /boot is bind-mounted.
    - Add support for writing an MBR on each disk in an mdadm-managed RAID
      providing /boot.
    - Properly make use of output from os-prober to configure the booting of
      other operating systems on dmraid arrays. Attempt to guess where in
      the device map the array belongs, by substituting the first drive in
      the dmraid array for the dmraid array device node itself, and removing
      any reference to other member disks of the array.
    - Add support for lpia.
    - Set a sensible default boot device when /cdrom is not iso9660, as this
      is probably a USB install and (hd0) does not make sense when
      installing from a removable disk.
    - Use rootnoverify rather than root when chain-loading Microsoft
      operating systems.
  * Go back to using update-grub -y for GRUB Legacy for now; our grub
    package is a bit old and still requires this.
  * Default to grub2 for GPT systems.
  * Allow grub/grub2 choice for ext4, though still default to grub2.
  * Drop code to handle error messages in dmraid's output, which is no
    longer needed.

grub-installer (1.38) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Make findfs use the last of any mounts found, in case there's more than
    one due to pilot error in the partitioner (LP: #289101).
  * Use grub-ieee1275 on powerpc, not grub-of which no longer exists.

  [ Max Vozeler ]
  * Use grub2 when ext4 is chosen (closes: #529363).

  [ Felix Zielcke ]
  * Change the debhelper compat level to 7 and bump the build
    dependency.
  * Replace deprecated `dh_clean -k' with `dh_prep'.
  * Remove the lintian overrides, they're no longer needed.
  * Use UUIDs in the grub2 generated menuentrys. (Closes: #473401)
  * Add drivemap in the grub2 generated menuentry for DOS/Windows in
    case a recent grub2 gets installed.
...

[Keith Withey (witheyk)]

Trying to install grub & system on SSD, data (and existing win 7) on separate disc.