No bootable partition after Ubuntu install

[Doctor Who]

>
>  To add to that, if I mount /dev/sda1 locally and then look for
>  /boot/grub/stage1, it *is* there.  Just not being seen.
>

I take that back...it's not there.  That was a fat-finger mistake and
I was looking at that from my desktop.  So grub is not there.

desktop:/mnt/tmp/boot # ls -al
total 10576
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 2008-03-19 17:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root    4096 2008-04-05 11:56 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  422387 2008-03-12 21:43 abi-2.6.24-12-generic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   79746 2008-03-12 21:43 config-2.6.24-12-generic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 7353114 2008-03-19 17:29
initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic.bak
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  103204 2007-09-28 06:06 memtest86+.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  903816 2008-03-12 21:43 System.map-2.6.24-12-generic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1909528 2008-03-12 21:43 vmlinuz-2.6.24-12-generic