I am trying to re-install a RHEL 5.3 server that previously had SAN disks assigned to it (and still has) so that I can leave the SAN disks presented and re-install RHEL 5.x without it crashing. My understanding from the manual (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...2-options.html) was that you could use kick the following to kick off an install:
linux ks=blahblah ignoredisk --drives=sdb,sdc

With the above, I was expecting the SAN disks wouldn't cause the installer to crash. I know I can have the SAN disks unmapped and RHEL 5.x installs properly (tested it previously) but would like to avoid this as I have to rely on other people for that to happen (not to mention have them represent the disks after the installation is complete).

However, an old bugzilla note (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=366341) has someone suggesting that “ignoredisk really only refers to that certain disks should not be used when creating partitions and clearing devices."

So which one is it?

I see that newer releases of Fedora include a useful option that would be ideal where you specify the local disk you want used for the installation and the SAN disks are ignored, but I don’t have that luxury as I have to install with RHEL 5 (from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anacon...art#ignoredisk) :
ignoredisk --only-use=[disk1,disk2,...]

I think you're missing the point, it's a kickstart option .. so it goes in the kickstart file, not on the command line

thechic, as kbp said you will have to use the ignoredisk directive inside the kickstart file rather than using it as a kernel parameter. This should work, but just in case you can also try using 'nostorage'. This will skip the storage devices.