Comment 26 for bug 260001

Looks to me like GRUB doesn't want to be installed onto the Boot Block of a partition; it wants to be installed onto the Master Boot Block of a disk.

Now, when you manually install GRUB onto the Boot Block of a partition (using the GRUB "setup" command), it displays a warning about being unable to write some stuff out (I believe it's a message about stage 1.5, for which there is no room when you install it onto a Boot Block), but it clearly states that this failure is not fatal.

Perhaps the installer picks up this warning and "promotes" it into an error?

Anyway, I have now been able to install Intrepid Ibex, with GRUB going to the Master Boot Record of what this Ubuntu release calls "(hd0)" in GRUB terms. My BIOS, however, sees it as the second (NOT the first) harddisk. This disagreement has the fortunate side-effect that my EXISTING Master Boot Record wasn't touched; UNfortunately, though, booting the 8.10 system is now somewhat clumsy, since I have to select the second harddisk as the boot disk whenever I want to run Ubuntu 8.10.

Having said that, I would now like to install GRUB onto the Boot Block of the 8.10 root partition, so I can continue to make my main GRUB (installed onto the Master Boot Block of my first harddisk) link to it via chainloading.