Problem Report i386/39574

[Paul Lambert]

This problem was reported in version 4.4 back in June of 2002.  I reported 
this problem in June of 2003 but can find no entry or reference to my 
reported problem.  However, my problem is the same as 39574.

The error goes like this.  You get all the way through the install setup 
and as soon as you confirm the install you get the error message: error 
mounting /dev/acd0c on /dist.  No such file of directory.

I read some of the trouble shooting documents.  I thought the problem was 
the fact that I had the my CDROM as the slave on the at1 IDE 
interface.  There was something in the documentation that states FreeBSD is 
expecting disk0 to be drive 1 and disk1 to be drive 2.  After I changed the 
CDROM to the master I still got the same results.  (My hard drive is on the 
at0 IDE interface.  FreeBSD isn't expecting both the CDROM and targeted 
hard drive to be on the same interface now is it?)

This error has propagated since the time it was reported in Version 4.4 to 
4.8 and now 5.1.  (I have recently tried 4.8 and 5.1 with the same results, 
thougth the 5.1 error code is not as descriptive.)  I copied FreeBSD and 
made my own CDROM media for both.

This is a vary serious problem.  FreeBSD should consider discontinuing 
support for floppy, serial, etc. installation methods and only offer CDROM 
and Network.  Installing from a CDROM should be effortless, it was when I 
installed FreeBSD 2.7 way back when.

The CDROM is referred to as acd0 when the kernel boots, not acd0c.  When 
running the emergency shell I was able to see acd0a and acd0c.  I renamed 
acd0c to acd0 and got a different error.

Therefore, the fact that I can boot and FreeBSD can read the install 
programs from the CDROM confirms that this device is supported by FreeBSD 
and that the error is most likely a distribution configuration error.  Is 
there a work around?  How about giving some priority to this problem.  It 
appears many can't even install FreeBSD via CDROM.

Paul