OK, I've solved the problem.... Appears that if you put the recipe on one line, without the escaping "\" , the installer nicely partitions the disk. <div class="gmail_quote">2009/6/30 Andy Kannberg <<a href="mailto:andy.kannberg@gmail.com">andy.kannberg@gmail.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi, I'm trying to install a HP ProLiant DL380 with Ubuntu via a preseed config file. All goes well, except for the partitioning part. The server makes use of Smartarray. the partitioning part in the preseed file is shown below: d-i partman-auto/method string regular d-i partman-auto/disk /dev/cciss/c0d0 d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \ boot-root :: \ 2048 50 2048 ext3 \ $primary{ } \ method{ format } format{ } \ use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \ mountpoint{ / } \ . \ 2048 50 2048 linux-swap \ $primary{ } method{ swap } format{ } \ . \ 4096 50 4096 ext3 \ method{ format } format{ } \ use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \ mountpoint{ /usr } \ . \ 4096 50 4096 ext3 \ method{ format } format{ } \ use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \ mountpoint{ /var } \ . \ 2048 50 2048 ext3 \ method{ format } format{ } \ use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \ mountpoint{ /tmp } \ . \ 4096 50 1000000000 ext3 \ method{ format } format{ } \ use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \ mountpoint{ /data } \ . d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true d-i partman/choose_partition \ select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk d-i partman/confirm boolean true The installer doesn't show an error, so I don't know where or what is going wrong. Can anyone shed a light on this ? cheers, Andy </blockquote></div>