GRUB Section in 11.04 Preseed file

[Tom H]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 6:43 PM, Marc Deslauriers
<marcdeslauriers at videotron.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 15:23 -0500, nikhil . wrote:
>>
>> In my company we use the Ubuntu alternate ISO to automate our Ubuntu
>> deployments on many hundreds of systems. I'm trying to test Ubuntu
>> 11.04 installs now and have gone past several issues in the preseed
>> file but I'm stuck with an error in GRUB install.
>>
>> In 11.04 x64 installer, I get a prompt for "Select location for
>> installing GRUB" and then I enter /dev/sda but this does not work. I
>> have tried /dev/sda1, /dev/sda3, /dev/sda5 (all are valid partitions).
>> My section in preseed file is
>>
>> d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean false
>> d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean false
>> d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string /dev/sda1
>>
>>  What is strange is that the above section works for the 11.04 32-bit
>> installer without a problem.
>
> I think you need to specify the partition in a grub format, ie:
>
> d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0)

"sda1" works in the OP's 32-bit installs (and sda works for me).

But, interestingly, I have two versions of Squeeze's install manual.

In one (the one now available on debian.org), there's:

# Alternatively, if you want to install to a location other than the mbr,
# uncomment and edit these lines:
#d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,0)
# To install grub to multiple disks:
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,0) (hd1,0) (hd2,0)

In another (that I downloaded some unknown time ago, when Squeeze was
"testing"), there's:

# Alternatively, if you want to install to a location other than the mbr,
# uncomment and edit these lines:
#d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,0)
# To install grub to multiple disks:
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,0) (hd1,0) (hd2,0)
# To install to a particular device:
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string /dev/sda

Go figure!

I would've thought that sda and (hd0) would be interchangeable because
of "/boot/grub/device.map".

I even used "d-i grub-installer/bootdev string /dev/cciss/c0d0" last year.