Partman Cannot Partition Raw Image Made by QEMU

Since Ubuntu Breezy, I have used QEMU to test my auto-install images. I have used "qemu-image create virtual XXg" as my means of creating the destination disk. Without explicitly setting the format via "-f," qemu-img assumes a blank/raw image format. This has worked fine with the auto-installer in the past. Now with Edgy, the system claims to partition just fine; but after the partitioning finishes, the disk has no partition table and the installer claims that it cannot mount the partitions. If I specify the format to "-f qcow," the installer miraculously creates the partitions and they are seen by performing fdisk in terminal #2 during the install.

Excerpts from the installer include:
 (Virtual Terminal #4 )
partman: /sbin/tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1
...
kernel: unable to find swap-space signature
(fdisk)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite).

Here is my preseed file; some information has been redacted:

#Boot parameters to specify:
#- if you're netbooting:
# preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
# preseed/url/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d
#
#- if you're booting a remastered CD:
# preseed/file=/cdrom/preseed.cfg
# preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d
#
#- if you're installing from USB media (put the preconfiguration file in the
# toplevel directory of the USB stick):
# preseed/file=/hd-media/preseed.cfg
# preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

#It's also possible to use DHCP to specify a preconfiguration file to download from the network. DHCP allows specifying a filename. Normally this is a file to netboot, but if it appears to be an URL then installation media that support network preseeding will download the file from the URL and use it as a preconfiguration file. Here is an example of how to set it up in the dhcpd.conf for version 3 of the ISC DHCP server (the dhcp3-server Ubuntu package).
#if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 3) = "d-i" {
# filename "http://host/preseed.cfg";
#}
#
# Note that the above example limits this filename to DHCP clients that identify themselves as "d-i", so it will not affect regular DHCP clients, but only the installer. You can also put the text in a stanza for only one particular host to avoid preseeding all installs on your network.
# A good way to use the DHCP preseeding is to only preseed values specific to your network, such as the Ubuntu mirror to use. This way installs on your network will automatically get a good mirror selected, but the rest of the installation can be performed interactively. Using DHCP preseeding to fully automate Ubuntu installs should only be done with care.

d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US

d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto
d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unknown
d-i netcfg/get_domain string ima.umn.edu

d-i mirror/country string enter information manually
d-i mirror/http/hostname string apt.ima.umn.edu
d-i mirror/http/directory string /ubuntu
# Suite to install.
#d-i mirror/suite string edgy
# Suite to use for loading installer components (optional).
#d-i mirror/udeb/suite string edgy

d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/hda
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
 boot-root :: \
  500 10000 600 ext3 \
   $primary{ } \
                 $bootable{ } \
                 method{ format } \
                 format{ } \
                 use_filesystem{ } \
                 filesystem{ ext3 } \
                 mountpoint{ /boot } \
  . \
  1500 9000 2500 ext3 \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ ext3 } \
   mountpoint{ / } \
  . \
  4550 9500 6500 xfs \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ xfs } \
   mountpoint{ /var } \
  . \
  1000 8500 2000 xfs \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ xfs } \
   mountpoint{ /tmp } \
  . \
  10000 8500 15000 xfs \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ xfs } \
   mountpoint{ /usr } \
  . \
  1000 10000 3000 linux-swap \
   method{ swap } \
                        format{ } \
                . \
  1000 6000 1000000 xfs \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ xfs } \
   mountpoint{ /scratch } \
  . \
  4500 8500 7000 xfs \
   method{ format } \
   format{ } \
   use_filesystem{ } \
   filesystem{ xfs } \
   mountpoint{ /usr/local } \
  .
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
#d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition select \
# Manually edit partition table
d-i partman/choose_partition select \
 Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
d-i partman/confirm boolean true

d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true
d-i time/zone string US/Central

d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true
d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true
d-i apt-setup/backports boolean true
# Uncomment this to avoid adding security sources, or
# add a hostname to use a different server than security.ubuntu.com.
d-i apt-setup/security_host string apt.ima.umn.edu

# Additional repositories, local[0-9] available
d-i apt-setup/local0/repository string \
       deb http://apt.ima.umn.edu/apt/ edgy/
d-i apt-setup/local0/comment string Current IMA Packages
# Enable deb-src lines
d-i apt-setup/local0/source boolean true
# URL to the public key of the local repository
d-i apt-setup/local0/key string http://apt.ima.umn.edu/apt/pubring.gpg

d-i apt-setup/local1/repository string \
       deb http://apt.ima.umn.edu/apt-secondary/ edgy/
d-i apt-setup/local1/comment string Old IMA Packages
# Enable deb-src lines
d-i apt-setup/local1/source boolean true
# URL to the public key of the local repository
d-i apt-setup/local1/key string http://apt.ima.umn.edu/apt-secondary/pubring.gpg

d-i passwd/root-login boolean true
d-i passwd/make-user boolean false

d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true
d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true

tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-standard

#d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server build-essential

popularity-contest popularity-contest/participate boolean true

#d-i preseed/early_command string anna-install some-udeb
#d-i preseed/late_command string apt-install zsh; in-target chsh -s /bin/zsh

# Boot parameter console-setup/layoutcode=us
d-i console-setup/layoutcode string us

# Uncomment this to enable automatic reboot
#d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note

d-i cdrom-detect/eject boolean true

d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i console-setup/detect boolean us
d-i console-setup/detected note

d-i console-setup/layout select U.S. English
console-setup console-setup/detect detect-keyboard us
console-setup console-setup/ask_detect boolean false

console-setup console-setup/layout select U.S. English

console-setup console-setup/variant select
d-i console-setup/variant select