Comment 5 for bug 123102

I confirm this bug.

Here's how to reproduce it in a vmware machine. I am not sure, wheather the disk geometry is relevant for this bug, so please use the same values for disk sizing and partitioning:

Create a VM with following configuration:
-typical / Linux / Ubuntu / 8.0GB / uncheck "allocate disk space now" (the last should not be relavant...)

Boot Feisty-InstallCD
Start Installer and keep defaults up to partitioning.
Choose 'manual' and create the following three partitions:
* logical - 100MB - beginning - reiserfs - /boot
* logical - 1024MB - beginning - swap
* logical - remaining space (7468) - beginning - reiserfs - /

Continue with installation. On the final page use button 'advanced' to set the grub installation target to (hd0,4).
The installation will fail on 94%

The syslog says:
Aug 8 12:15:21 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy "(hd0,4)"
...
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: grub> root (hd0,4)
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: grub> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --prefix=/grub (hd0,4)
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Checking if "/grub/reiserfs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Running "embed /grub/reiserfs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)"... 20 sectors are embedded.
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: succeeded
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Running "install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /grub/stage1 (hd0,4) (hd0,4)1+20 p (hd0,4)/grub/stage2 /grub/menu.lst"... failed
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer:
Aug 8 12:15:23 ubuntu grub-installer: Error 6: Mismatched or corrupt version of stage1/stage2

But, very interesting: After closing the (unfinished) installer, the target system is still mounted on /target. If i execute the command

sudo chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy --debug "(hd0,4)"

manually (only --debug added), it succeeds with this messages:

grub> root (hd0,4)
grub> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --prefix=/grub (hd0,4)
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/grub/reiserfs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /grub/reiserfs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)"... 20 sectors are embedded. succeeded
 Running "install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /grub/stage1 (hd0,4) (hd0,4)1+20 p (hd0,4)/grub/stage2 /grub/menu.lst"... succeeded