grub installs to "(hd0)" without asking which can cause data corruption

[Mark Weaver]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

Ubuntu 9.10 server install CD, amd64.

I have 7 hard disks which were detected as sda->sdg. sda->f are part of a RAID-5 volume, the entire disk is used and there is no partition table.

I installed to paritions on /dev/sdg, and at the end of the installation grub-install "(hd0)" was run automatically.

grub's device map is:

(hd0)->sda
(hd1)->sdb
...
(hd6)->sdg

this caused:

a) grub not to be installed on the boot disk leaving the system unbootable;
b) data corruption on the RAID set as grub does not like unpartioned disks. It reports:

Attempting to install GRUB to a partitionless disk. This is a BAD idea.

and then continues anyway, scribbling over some random sectors.