Description of problem: While installing RHEL5 using a kickstart file that contained a 'clearpart --all' entry, I was somewhat dismayed to discover that the external USB disk I had forgotten to disconnect. Now technically it doing the right thing - it is doing what I actually asked it to do. However, I feel that blowing away external devices is somewhat unexpected behaviour - it feels decidedly unsafe. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Attach a USB disk (might also work with other external devices such as SANs and USB keys) to machine 2. Install using a kickstart file that contains the line 'clearpart --all' Actual results: Wave byebye to all data on external drive Expected results: As it is an external drive I would expect it to, by default, not touch it. An explicit flag --external or somesuch would be nice. Additional info:
We also will install to external drives. If you don't want external drives to be considered at all, add 'nousbstorage' to your boot command line and we won't ever load the module. You can also specify specific disks to clear with --drives= on your clearpart line or add drives to be explicitly ignored with ignoredrive.
Agreed it is not a bug, and I am aware of the various options that can be passed to the kernel and installer. However, IMHO the default should be the other way round, as it is far more likely that somebody will have external storage connected that they don't wish to install to/blow away: Defaulting to an accidental data loss situation just seems... wrong. But maybe that's just me :)