First I tried installing ubuntu 11.10 on my home server using the alternate cd. Everything worked fine until i got to the part where it tries to install grub, and it failed. i gave up and figured it would work in 12.04, so I just installed the gui-desktop version which worked fine. now 12.04 rolls around and i tried again, and it still failed. i'm running a 6 disk raid 5 raid. /dev/sda is part of the raid, so that seems to be why. the hard drive i'm using to install the os on is /dev/sde, so i went back through and tried to install grub to /dev/sde and it still didn't work.

i need to use the alternate cd to encrypt everything other than /boot, so i need to make it work. any ideas?

Are you installing the Ubuntu Grub bootloader to the root partition on sde? or to the master boot record of sde? and do you then have sde set to first boot priority when trying to boot Ubuntu? If you have another system on the computer, are you using its bootloader to try to boot Ubuntu? How did you configure it? Without more information on your system, there will be no practical advice just guessing.

the thing is it isn't installing at all. it just fails, and no it's the only os running on the computer. i'm using it as a home server. so right now I have the os installed, but no bootloader installed, and as far as I'm aware there isn't even a grub config file made, unless that is done independant of the grub installer.

and i dunno it just asks me where i want to install it and i put in /dev/sde and it said it failed, but it also failed with the default location too.

i'm probably going to have to install the bootloader seperate from the os, which is fine but I don't really know how to do that.

Try to install bootloader on / partition of /dev/sde.

I'm having a little difficulty understanding what you are trying to do. In your initial post, you say that you have a home server with a 6 disk raid setup. In your last post, you say Ubuntu is the only OS running on the computer but you don't have a bootloader installed and therefore it cannot boot so, how can it be running? Could you clarify your set up?

Do you get any message when the grub install fails?
You might try running the bootinfoscript from the site below and posting it here. It will give a lot of detailed information on your boot files which may help resolve your problem:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

Well, I had it up and running. First it was running 10.04, then after a while I upgraded it to 11.10 and then I upgraded it to 12.04 beta. All of those times I installed it using the GUI desktop version.

This time I want to have everything encrypted except for /boot, so I have to use the alternate edition of ubuntu. And that's where the problem starts. I've tried multiple versions of ubuntu alternate version (12.04, 12.04 beta, 11.10 etc) and no matter what the bootloader won't install properly, so currently the server is not running, though it has the os installed. There is no bootloader, and I've never actually gotten into the OS. So that is what the problem is.

Well I have /dev/sde partitioned. it's a 500 gb hd with 4 partitions

/
/home
/boot
swap

so how would I put that in when it asks me where I want it?

/dev/sde/

or /dev/sde3/ ?

Every single parition/drive is encrypted except for /boot (including the raid)

I'll try running that from a live environment. thanks for showing that to me.

To the master boot record of whichever hard drive you set to first boot priority in the BIOS. If that is sde, then select sde. You can get detailed information on reinstalling Grub2 in Ubuntu at the site below in Section 12. I would suggest you read through all of the various optins before doing anything, especially the part under copying Live CD files when you have a separate /boot partition!

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2