Thanks for all your feedback guys, so based on your feedback that grub is
confused i thought i give it a go to prep the USB harddrive with the
netinstall image instead of running it from the USB stick.
So i did the following (from another Debian)
zcat boot.img.rz > /dev/sda
mount /dev/sda /mnt
cp initrd.gz /mnt (from the netinstall)
umount /mnt
And this time i only booted the machine with the USB HD attached and the
installer booted and run happily from the USB HD
i proceeded with the installation and selected /dev/sda as the partion to
put grub on
Reboot.... and still the same problem is there (no boot entries). also tried
the grub commands suggested but when i do root ( <tab> i only get fd0. and
the finds dosn't work
Then i tried to install grub on
/dev/sda1
dosn't boot at all
making the partition reiserfs instead of ext3
Grub error 17
after doing a rescue and grub-install /dev/sda
Grub error 18
So my guess is either
a) The USB-HD isn't supported ( which seems a bit unlikely as it boots the
installer )
b) Some weird restriction exist in the hardware to boot from a USB-HD
c) Im doing some stupid mistake that I'm not realizing
I can't really come up with anything what to do next if you guys have any
more suggestions please let me know
Thanks
/Mikael