Making Debian ignore a drive

[Paul Lussier]

"Kenneth E. Lussier" <klussier at comcast.net> writes:

> I don't want to disable IPMI. I need IPMI to continue to work. I just
> need the Debian installer to ignore any drive that isn't directly on the
> SCSI bus. I'll ask around on the FC lists and see if they can shed some
> light on it.

I think that SCSI has nothing to do with your problem.  The USB
drivers detect devices and map them back to the kernel as a SCSI
device.  So, assuming you don't need USB mass storage devices, I'm
betting that you can disable this module probe within the debian
installer.

I'm guessing that in this case, it's not a matter of FC being smarter,
but rather, less inclusive as to where it thinks it can install an OS.
In most cases one wouldn't install onto a USB mass storage device[1], so
the FC installer probably doesn't bother to probe them as a potential
install target.  

I'd check the debian installer[2] code and see if you can figure out how
to prevent the loading of the USB mass-storage module. If you can
accomplish that, I bet you stop seeing that thingy show up as
/dev/sda.

Btw, are you using a version of the installer based on discover or
udev?  If you're using discover, there appears to be --disable-bus
option, which can be given the string 'usb'.  discover seems to obey
/etc/discover.conf and /etc/discover.conf.d/*, which I'm sure you can
edit to exclude USB entirely, thereby making your problem "go away".

If you're using udev, you're on your own, since I haven't mucked with
that yet :)

[1] Though I can certainly understand why someone *would* want to
    install to a USB mass storage device, especially if they're
    building an appliance like, say, a router or firewall and need a
    place to store configs that can be dynamically updated.

[2] I've found that the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide is a great
    read, but seems lacking in the 'how does hardware detection
    actually work" area.  However, googling a bit on this I find:

    http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html

    The first link at the bottom of this page is in fact a Debian
    Installer for IPMI-based systems.  I have not followed this link,
    but it sounds somewhat promising :)
-- 
Seeya,
Paul