Comment 4 for bug 14010

To add a confirmation. This problem occurs when you try to install grub to a
partiton superblock and the filesystem type is not ext2/3.

That is, it has happened to me under the following conditions:

1. Not installing to the MBR, but rather installing to a primary partition
properly tagged with a boot flag. (I prefer *not* to touch the MBR if Windows NT
is installed in the disk, repairing *that* MBR later is too much of a bother).

2. Installing to a partition formatted with ReiserFS, XFS or JFS. The installer
refuses to install the grub stage files to the partition superblock.

3. If I save the partition block to a diskette (formatted with ext2/msdos/vfat)
and use it to boot up to the Ubuntu root partition, I can install grub to the
patition superblock from a terminal emulator or the console, with a success rate
of 100%. Afterwards, the system will boot up from that partition superblock
without problems.

I've had that problem happen in all systems I've tried, using PATA and SATA
drives from different verndors and mainboards of different vendors and chipsets,
so I would think the problem lies in the debian installer or the grub binaries
included therewith.