Bug#645757: misdetects Dell RAC as hard disk

[Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: minor
Tags: d-i squeeze

Hi,

we are deploying Debian on a large number of servers of different
types. One of our widely used server types is the Dell PowerEdge 1950
which is equipped with a RAC.

The Debian Installer detects the RAC as a hard disk and assigns it
/dev/sda. This, in turn, makes the installer choke since it tries
installing to /dev/sda first.

The culprit here might be our partman early_command:

d-i partman/early_command \
    string disk=$(list-devices disk | head -n1); \
    vgremove -f our-default-vg-name; \
    for part in $(list-devices partition | grep $disk );do dd if=/dev/zero of=$part bs=1024k count=16; done; \
    dd if=/dev/zero of=$disk bs=1024k count=16; \
    debconf-set partman-auto/disk "$disk"

Is "list-devices disk" supposed to list a removable USB disk in the
first place? If not, this is a bug which should be fixed.

If "list-devices disk" showing the RAC is a feature, how do you
suggest handling this case while not breaking the install process for
servers that don't have a RAC and where the build-in hard disk _is_ in
fact /dev/sda?

Any hints will be appreciated.

Greetings
Marc