Problem while installing FreeBSD 5.3 - ata0-master : FAILURE ATA IDENTIFY

[John Bolding]

This known problem cropped up on a brand new 1U system I installed
and nothing in the referred to errata appeared to help.

>
> http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html
>

However, I finally got the group at freebsdmall to respond, and their
ideas did resolve this issue. Why does the info in the errata NOT work?

Two reasons: (1) I was using the loader.conf line with a "set"
as the first word, like this

    set hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"     # This does NOT work

and (2), the variable I was told to use is NOT hint.acpi.0.disabled
but is in fact hint.apic.0.disabled.

I did read the section with the `apic' variable, but it did not
seem to apply, whereas the section about the `acpi' variable
did seem to apply.

So, the following two lines, exactly like this, worked for me in
my loader.conf, and I can now boot without safe mode:

hint.apic.0.disabled="1"
unset acpi_load

No leading blanks, no use of the word "set", use of the variable
with `apic' in it (and not acpi). The unset does turn off `acpi'.

All is well now.

Regards from Tucson,

-cc