usb-storage devices break the install

[Niall Sheridan]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

If I have a device that uses usb-storage attached to my machine during the install, usb-storage claims sda before the sata modules. On reboot, the sata modules are included in the initramfs which means the first disk is detected as sda, breaking fstab and grub as setup by the installer.
For reference, the usb devices are a series of card readers built into my monitor. When detached the install works as intended.

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Matt T. Proud (matttproud-google)]

We found a suboptimal work-around to this:

d-i preseed/early_command string modprobe -r usb-storage

Ideally udev could be modified to handle this more robustly. I would not consider this bug closed until some other less-hackish solution exists, since this approach is akin to using a sledgehammer to put in a mounting nail into a sheetrock wall.

[Andrew Pollock (apollock)]

Surely with Edgy+ mounting by UUID, this is less of a problem anyway (i.e. Niall's failure case isn't a problem any more?)

[Matt T. Proud (matttproud-google)]

Sadly we ran into it again today on a machine that came with a few builtin card-readers with the latest Hardy image.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

hmm, I've never considered this as a bug :) The workaround I've used is to preseed partman-auto/disk with a couple of devices (/dev/sda /dev/sde). Worked fine so far, although it is risky if there's the chance of actually having an external disk attached during install.

[David Wilson (mcs6502)]

I also ran into this issue with 8.04 Beta. Under 7.10 my hard disk is /dev/sda (it is a PATA drive on a SIS 5513 controller on the m/b). When I installed 8.04 Beta the hard drive became /dev/sde with sda..sdd being the built-in CF/SD/MS/SM reader. Even worse, when I booted 8.04 with a USB flash drive plugged into the system my hard drive became /dev/sdg (the flash drive looks like two drives - one 1.44MB and one 128MB) leading to interesting results from df where /dev/sdg1 was mounted as /media/sde1. Because of the UUIDs everything mounted properly but I would really like my boot disk to stay on /dev/sda.

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Andrew Pollock (apollock)]

Yes, still happening with Hardy. We're working around this currently by removing usb-storage in the early command of a preseeded install.

[Andrew Pollock (apollock)]

We had a brief look to see how CentOS dealt with the problem, and they seem to probe /dev/sda, and if it returns an error, they remove usb-storage, rescan for devices, and reprobe /dev/sda (which is now a real hard drive instead of a vacant card-reader slot).

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

Setting to confirmed.