i386/80989: Cannot install 5.4-RELEASE both in my system and in VMware Workstation 5

[Nick Barkas]

>Number:         80989
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       Cannot install 5.4-RELEASE both in my system and in VMware Workstation 5
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Fri May 13 16:30:02 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Nick Barkas
>Release:        5.4-RELEASE i386 "out-of-the-box" (no updates)
>Organization:
>Environment:
>Description:
  Hello ,I am Nick and I want to inform you that this mail is going to be lenghty.I wanted to send many bug reports in FreeBSD for quite some time now (about a year).I decided to start reporting them about a week ago.
  Please let my explain WHY DO I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT FreeBSD first.About a year ago I begun searching a UNIX OS(Being absolutely dissappointed by the crappy M$ OS's [The first computer in the house came with Windows 95 preinstalled around 1998 and the OS crashed three weeks later with no excuse]).I heard then about UNIX but did not care much.We come now in the end of 2003 where I used ALL Windows versions(AND I MEAN FROM Windows 3.x  TO Windows Server 2003) one after another WITH THE SAME BAD RESULTS,CRAPPY OS's.Sometime later I discovered FreeBSD (5.2 then which was the UNIX I wanted) and later GNU/Linux.I downloaded the 4 FreeBSD 5.2 .iso files without any hesitation (my very first .iso's from the net with my 56K dial up) and burned the cd1. OK,I admit it was not Windows but it was really fast for my AMD K-6-2 at 450 and I managed to get it work with KDE and/or GNOME.
  I was really happy to kick M$ Windows away but to my surprise,a month later 5.2.1-RELEASE came out.I was really angry and stopped using FreeBSD then (I decided that I would download 5.3 a month after its release).The 5.3 came in months later (and my new celeron at 2.4)and was downloaded(with dsl this time from GNU/Linux).Much to my surprise cd1 had a wrong volume id (already reported this error) and even worse it did not have the gdm package for GNOME (I love KDE but I also want GNOME).IT HAD FIXED THE NO FLOPPY ISSUE WITH ACPI ON,THOUGH AND WAS REALLY FAST EVEN IN MY K6-2.
  Three days after downloading and testing 5.3 (this time under Linux in VMware) 5.4 was released so I was more than happy to download it.ANOTHER UNPLEASANT SUPRISE FROM FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE: THIS TIME THE INSTALLATION WAS BROKEN AND HALF OF THE PACKAGES RETURNED AN ERROR CODE (I can send photos to anyone interested [both from the installer and the second shell]).ANOTHER PROBLEM IS THAT IT ASKS YOUR TO CHANGE THE CD-ROM MORE THAN FIVE TIMES AND IN THE END NOTHING IS INSTALLED WHICH IS RIDICULOUS.I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT 5.4 SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN RELEASED (AT LEAST NOT NOW).

  At present,I will stop using FreeBSD (Although it has the only UNIX kernel in the world that is as fast as the Windows9x kernel in old and slow systems[GNU/Linux is heavy for old systems])UNTIL IT GETS IN A DVD IMAGE WITH ALL(OR MANY) PACKAGES "BUILT IN" JUST TO  BE SURE THAT IT WILL PERFORM AN INSTALLATION AT LEAST(I mentioned this in another mail and a guy considered this as a threat.It is not a threat,it is what I am going to do as GNU/Linux works for me at least).

  HERE ARE THE FACTS AND THE REAL BUG REPORT:
The installer keeps nagging about:
Add of package <whatever> aborted, error code 1 - 
Please check the debug screen for more info.

If it means Ctrl-Alt-F2 for the debug info here is the shell output:
tar: Unrecognised archive format: Inappropriate file type or format
pkg_add: tar extract of - failed!
pkg_add: unable to extract table of contents file from '-' - not a package?

  To give an end to this long mail,(trying to guess some of your early thoughts) the iso images (of 5.2,5.3 and 5.4) where md5sum'ed and found OK and these where burned in high quality TDK CD-R80 52x discs in 16x speed with no errors reported.Anyone looking for a reply or for the installation pictures can contact me at <Linu4sure at gmail.com>.       
>How-To-Repeat:
  Just install FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE with GNOME AND KDE packages from sysinstall.Nothing will be installed in the end.      
>Fix:
1)Configure the installer in a way in which it will Know which packages are in CD1 ,it will install them AND THEN IT WILL ASK FOR THE CD2 PACKAGES.
2)If it is not possible to do the above THEN PLEASE GIVE ME A BRAKE AND RELEASE A DVD ISO IMAGE (IT MAY BE MORE THAN ONE WITH ALL PACKAGES) SO THAT AN END USER WILL DECIDE IF HE/SHE WANTS CD IMAGES(WITH BASIC PACKAGES) OR DVD IMAGE(S) (WITH ALL THE PACKAGES).Yoy could claim though,that this way a user could download a huge ISO image which would be worthless in a few days or hours.Personally speaking,I do the same thing with Linux and I have no problem(if I ever want the newer firefox for example I download only one package and not hundreds like pkg_add (as only the basic are installed).By the time more than 10-15 packages really need updating, a new distribution is rolled out).I do not care for all those new updated packages (which are hundreds every day for Linux and maybe for BSD?)and I download new DVD ISO images once in 6 months.There are users who would disagree with this but they would still have the option to download the CD images.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: