Comment 13 for bug 192938

IIRC, the problem wasn't with grub itself. It was that an earlier install step that failed (installation of language-pack-gnome-en-base). Once this failed, no new packages could be installed (including grub), but I was only informed that the installation was failing when grub was being installed. At least, that's how I interpret the entries in my syslog file (that I posted earlier). Those entries are below. I think to get around this I installed a nightly build at a later point, where the language-pack-gnome-en-base package had been fixed.

Probably what needs to happen is that the process which installed the earlier package needs to be fixed to inform the user of the error at that point, so that grub doesn't get blamed later by mistake.

I hope that helps!
-- Scott

Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: The following packages have unmet dependencies:
Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: language-pack-gnome-en-base: Depends: language-pack-gnome-en (>= 1:8.04+20080301) but it is not going to be installed
Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: language-support-en: Depends: language-support-translations-en but it is not going to be installed
Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: Depends: language-support-writing-en but it is not going to be installed
Mar 24 14:10:22 in-target: E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of language-pack-gnome-en-base:
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: language-pack-gnome-en-base depends on language-pack-gnome-en (>= 1:8.04+20080301); however:
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: Package language-pack-gnome-en is not installed.
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: dpkg: error processing language-pack-gnome-en-base (--configure):
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: Errors were encountered while processing:
Mar 24 14:10:23 in-target: language-pack-gnome-en-base
...
Mar 24 14:16:23 grub-installer: info: architecture: i386/generic
Mar 24 14:16:23 grub-installer: info: Identified partition label for /dev/sda3: msdos
Mar 24 14:16:24 grub-installer: dpkg - warning: ignoring request to remove grub-pc which isn't installed.
Mar 24 14:16:24 in-target: Reading package lists...
Mar 24 14:16:25 in-target:
Mar 24 14:16:25 in-target: Building dependency tree...
Mar 24 14:16:25 in-target:
Mar 24 14:16:25 in-target: Reading state information...
Mar 24 14:16:25 in-target:
Mar 24 14:16:26 in-target: You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
Mar 24 14:16:26 in-target: The following packages have unmet dependencies:
Mar 24 14:16:26 in-target: language-pack-gnome-en-base: Depends: language-pack-gnome-en (>= 1:8.04+20080301) but it is not going to be installed
Mar 24 14:16:26 in-target: E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Mar 24 14:16:26 grub-installer: info: Calling 'apt-install grub' failed