installation of Kubuntu crashes on grub install sda

[Patrick Dickey]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 457, in <module>
    main(oem_config)
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 442, in main
    install(args[0], query=options.query)
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 245, in install
    ret = wizard.run()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/kde_ui.py", line 440, in run
    self.progress_loop()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/kde_ui.py", line 865, in progress_loop
    (ret, realtb))
RuntimeError: Install failed with exit code 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 2444, in <module>
    install.run()
  File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 459, in run
    self.configure_bootloader()
  File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 1801, in configure_bootloader
    "GrubInstaller failed with code %d" % ret)
InstallStepError: GrubInstaller failed with code 1

[Patrick Dickey (pdickeybeta)]

I wasn't able to attach both files to the original submission. Attached is the syslog file.

Also, I have previously installed Kubuntu on this computer. This was a reinstallation. I may have chosen the wrong option for GRUB (I chose sda).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

"grub-probe: error: not a directory" seems to be the core error. Sadly incomprehensible. I'm reassigning to grub-installer for now, but I'm not sure whether this is a bug in GRUB or in how we're installing it.

[Patrick Dickey (pdickeybeta)]

I should add this information also. It only happened when I tried to install using the Live CD. I ended up getting Kubuntu 9.10 to install and GRUB to work by doing two things (not sure which actually fixed it though).

1. I selected Install Now from the boot menu (bypassing the Live CD environment).
2. I completely wiped out the existing partitions for Kubuntu, and recreated them.

Previously, I was trying to reinstall Kubuntu over an existing installation. This is because one of the recent security updates keeps leaving the computer un-usable (it comes up with the error about items in fstab needing to wait on something to close, and freezes up there).

Ultimately, I went back to Kubuntu 9.04 for now, until I get a chance to dig into it more to find out what security update bricks the computer. *** This was after I successfully installed Kubuntu 9.10 and GRUB after having filed this bug report.****

Have a great day:)
Patrick.

[apt-ghetto (apt-ghetto)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Karmic Koala reached EOL on April 30, 2011.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub-installer (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]