DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 installation failures

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

This is just a status update on my long problem report about being
unable to install DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 on my new Dell Precision 7920
workstation.

Some correspondents have since kindly provided suggestions, and I have
accordingly made several more attempts, all without success, and all
with the same hang during the boot.

I have tried both *.img and *.iso DragonFlyBSD file types, removed the
conv=fdatasync from the dd command used to copy those files to USB
drives, tried the Ubuntu /usr/bin/usb-creator-gtk tool to write the
USB drive instead of using dd, tried USB devices from at least six
different hardware vendors, and tried recent daily snapshots of
DragonFlyBSD, as well as the official 5.6.2, 5.6.1, 5.4.1, and 5.4.0
releases.

I then attempted installs of OpenBSD 6.5 and 6.6 from *.iso and *.fs
files: the *.iso files result in "no bootable device found", but the
*.fs files got a bit further, finally hanging, either with no further
keyboard input possible, or completing the boot, but being unable to
see the installation disk.  A quick reboot with an Ubuntu 20.04 USB
showed that the target disk is definitely there.

Next, I tried Trident/TrueOS: installation succeeded, but the system
would then not reboot.  With Trident/Void Linux, installation failed
with 

	property 'autotrim' is not a valid filesystem property
        ERROR: could not create pool: trident on /dev/sda3

The target disk is a brand new Crucial MX500 1TB SSD.

Yesterday afternoon, I tried GhostBSD 20.01, and that succeeded.  I've
installed 100+ packages on it, and successfully built TeX Live 2020
(see

	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah-2020/

for a status report: a build from a DragonFlyBSD 5.2 VM is included
there).  I'm now installing several recent gcc releases with support
for decimal floating-point arithmetic.

Once my GhostBSD work is done, I'll return to the DragonFlyBSD builds
and followup on another helpful suggestion sent this morning by a list
member.

Thanks again for your kind suggestions!

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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