Live CD installer crashes after failing to install grub

[Jon Brett]

1. Booted amd64 live cd.
2. Installed lvm2 by running "sudo apt-get install lvm2" (I am installing to existing lvm device).
3. Run installer, installing / on lvm, /boot on /dev/sdb1 and bootloader on /dev/sda1
4. Get error installing bootloader
5. Installer reports crash

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: ubiquity 2.8.7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.287
Date: Tue Nov 22 22:35:01 2011
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Exception during installation:
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: Traceback (most recent call last):
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1641, in <module>
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: install.run()
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 55, in wrapper
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: func(self)
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 210, in run
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: self.remove_extras()
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1404, in remove_extras
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: if self.db.get('apt-setup/restricted') == 'false':
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/debconf.py", line 60, in <lambda>
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: lambda *args, **kw: self.command(command, *args, **kw))
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/debconf.py", line 81, in command
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: status = int(status)
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py: ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''
Nov 22 22:34:58 ubuntu plugininstall.py:

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

From the syslog file the exact error message:

Nov 22 21:33:08 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Identified partition label for /dev/sdb1: msdos
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-legacy
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-efi
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-efi-amd64-bin
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-efi-amd64
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-efi-ia32-bin
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there is no installed package that matches grub-efi-ia32
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/sda1'
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppy
Nov 22 21:33:11 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/sda1"
Nov 22 21:33:13 ubuntu grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partition-less disk or to a partition. This is a BAD idea..
Nov 22 21:33:13 ubuntu grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for cross-disk install.
Nov 22 21:33:13 ubuntu grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/sda1"' failed.

[Jon Brett (jonbrett)]

Having reviewed the logs, it is clear that I was doing something dumb in trying to install grub on /dev/sda1 (a partition) instead of /dev/sda (my first hard disk) (See last line of comment #3).

However, I would still expect the installer to handle this gracefully, without crashing, so this bug still stands.

Perhaps the installer could even to provide some helpful message to set unobservant users like me on the correct path e.g. "Are you sure you want to install grub on a partition, instead of the disk?".

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

You normally can install grub to a partition and some people have reasons for doing so, but not in this case since your system is installed on a different disk.