Making Debian ignore a drive

[Paul Lussier]

klussier at comcast.net writes:

>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Thomas Charron" <twaffle at gmail.com>
>> On 4/10/07, Michael ODonnell <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
>> > Does the BIOS config screen offer the option of disabling
>> > that USB device?
>> 
>>   It sounds like the motherboard has the ability to boot USB drives
>> and has them emulate an IDE and/or SCSI drive.  Chances are, there is
>> a BIOS option to turn off this capability.  It means you can't boot
>> from the USB drive, untill you go into the BIOS and re-enable it.
>
> I wish that were the case. You can't disable this in the BIOS. It's not a drive that is ever supposed to be seen. It's a boot ROM used for IMPI management. Just to see what would happen, I tried installing FC5 on one of the boxes, and it was blissfully un-aware that the device even existed. There is something in the Debian installer that just refuses to ignore it....

Will you please set you mail client to wrap at 78ish characters?  All
you e-mail comes through as one long line.

IPMI can usually be disabled in the BIOS.  If FC5 installs "correctly"
you might want to see how they're figuring it out, or ask on the FC
forums/mailinglists, etc.

I think I have some system with IPMI capability at work, I'll try to
remember to look at this tomorrow.  I know none of them have the USB
thingy installed by default though.  Btw, what kind of system is this?
Name brand, like Dell or HP, or something else? Have you asked the
official hw support channels for help?
-- 
Seeya,
Paul