Comment 17 for bug 145836

I also get the problem under 9.04 installer 8.10 installer. Seems that my harddrive is not a common one.

For 8.10, I manipulated /lib/partman/init.d/35dump (removing the 2 lines of output in /tmp) and it worked fine. For 9.04, it was a bit more tricky!

By the way, here is the steps I used to get ubuntu installed anyway. I thought it could help anybody getting out of problems... This solution is a tricky one, "use at your own risk blablabla"

1/ trap the partman:
edit (as sudo) /bin/partman and /bin/partman-commit -> erase all content and remplace by "exit 0"

2/ make your partitions using gparted
you need at least one ext2/3/4 fs

3/ simulate the job of partman
One of the job of partman is mounting your target filesystem in /target
So, let's do it:
mkdir /target
mount /dev/sda2 /target

4/ run ubiquity as normal
It will complain after the keyboard selection layout, saying that you could destroy everything and disappear in a black hole if you continue, but continue anyway...

5/ generate your own fstab file in /target/etc/fstab

6/ Grub_update will fail (~97% of installation process)
Grub will not find the necessary data, update it manually...
cd /target
chroot /target update-grub /dev/sda
grub-install --root-directory=/target /dev/sda

7/ reboot

8/ when started:
- use "janitor" to clean up install...
- change keyboard option
- add other os's into /boot/grub/menu.lst

Well, now, if your followed all those instructions, and that you are lucky enough, you should get an up and running ubuntu! Otherwise...