Comment 5 for bug 574468

I have the same problem and same hardware. After a lot of struggling, I found a workaround that allowed me to install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my blade. Here's what I did.

You will need an Ubuntu Server 10.04 CD and a USB stick formatted as ext2 (or possibly other file systems, but I couldn't get a fat32 stick to mount, so I reformatted it to ext2 and it worked) with the Ubuntu Server iso image on it.

With those materials in hand, this is what I did:
1. boot your blade to the Ubuntu Server CD. Make sure the USB stick is plugged in as well.
2. when the installer gets to the point where it fails to detect the CD, go back to the main menu and select "Execute Shell."
3. in the shell, mount the USB stick with commands like:
  mkdir /mnt/sdb1
  mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
4. next, mount the Ubuntu Server ISO image as a loopback device at the mountpoint /cdrom:
  mount -o loop -t iso9660 /mnt/sdb1/ubuntu-10.04-server-amd64.iso /cdrom
5. type "exit" to exit the shell and go back to the main menu. From there, select the option to detect the CD ROM. It should now work and you can proceed with the installation.

This is a complicated workaround and it would be great to have the bug itself fixed. I'm happy to provide any information towards that end.