Packages/Ports problem

[Jimmie Houchin]

Hello,

I just installed FreeBSD 5.2 from the beta iso onto my new dual Opteron
240 server. The server has the Arima RioWorks HDAMA motherboard, onboard
Promise SATA RAID, onboard dual gb Broadcom 5702 nics. I have 4 250gb
SATA drives and 4gb ram.

I have attempted to install:
   Debian (unsuccessful, does not recognize hardware)
   NetBSD (unsuccessful, boot floppies and cd do not boot correctly)
   Gentoo Linux (successful but with issues)
     I currently run Gentoo on my desktop machine.
     I might be reconsidering my desktop decision
     after what I've seen here. :)

The FreeBSD install (with the exception below) was quite a refreshing
experience. The CD booted without problem, recognized all my hardware.
It is the only install which recognized everything.
It even recognized that the Promise RAID had two different arrays
configured by the Promise BIOS.  Gentoo didn't/doesn't recognize that at
all. Impressive. :)

The sysinstall program is a nice installer with plenty of helps.

This is my first FreeBSD install and I am very pleased with my experience.

My problem is that in the install it fails to get the selected packages.
It installs the base and such correctly. I am left with a bootable
system, but no XFree86 and other stuff.

I get this message even after successfully downloading via ftp the base
and other core stuff.

"Unable to get packages/INDEX file from selected media."

It says something about its probably not on the mirror.
I am using the primary ftp mirrors and also #7.

My initial thought was that the binary packages aren't available for
amd64. So I tried to

pkg_add -r cvsup

This too gave me an error about no such file on the server.

I've tried to read the docs and search the mailing list archives but
haven't found where I am going wrong.

Any help in getting the rest of the system installing would be greatly
appreciated.

I am very pleased and impressed thus far and look forward to completing
this install.

Thanks,

Jimmie Houchin