Making Debian ignore a drive

[Ben Scott]

On 4/11/07, Kenneth E. Lussier <klussier at comcast.net> wrote:
> I just need the Debian installer to ignore any drive that isn't directly on the
> SCSI bus.

  I know almost nothing about Debian's installer, which is why I've
kept quiet, but this seems to be a tough one, so maybe it's time to
try some vague speculation:

  In many distro installers, there is a way to specify an "expert
mode" where the installer does not auto-probe *any* driver modules.
Does Debian have such a thing?  If it does, and you use it, does it
prevent the installer from seeing the USB device?

  Are we sure this is a USB device, and not something funky that some
Linux driver is presenting as USB because the kernel's USB subsystem
provided a convenient API?

> I'll ask around on the FC lists and see if they can shed some light on it.

  The assumption appears to be that Fedora is being smarter.  It could
also be that it's being dumber, or just less flexible.  For example,
maybe it doesn't have all the drivers (or the versions) that Debian
does, and so it never sees the hardware that's causing you grief.
Maybe the installer doesn't support installing to all USB devices.
Maybe it ignores any devices smaller than a certain size.

  Are we sure Fedora doesn't see it at all?  Maybe Fedora is just
detecting it as sdb?

> I may just have to continue to re-configure GRUB after the install.

  Are you reconfiguring GRUB after the installer proper runs but
before the first reboot, or after the installer finishes and reboots
and the system fails to boot?  What exactly are you doing when you
"re-configure GRUB"?  Are you just changing "root (hd1,0)" to "root
(hd0,0)"?

  There are ways to control how the OS-encapsulated GRUB stuff
(/sbin/grub and /sbin/grub-installer) sees your hardware, so you might
be able to fix it by passing "custom options" to GRUB during the
install process.

-- Ben