>   The Install utility doesn't want to recognize the root partition if
> the swap partition is before the root! I lost two hours to discover
> this "Bug".

I have never seen this at all.  Nor have I seen the other problems that
you list.  It sounds like the partition table is lying in some fashion.
Did the installer pick up the swap partition _as_ the root partition
before you swapped them?

Try running disk tools before you launch BSD.  BSD does not write to the
partition map at all (unless the partition map is broken).

>   I moved my MacOS partition at the end of the disk and prepared new
> Unix partitions. I will install a third time this afternoon to see if
> this will resolve the restart crash.

The next time you boot into BSD, run the "disklabel" program and send me
the results from the bottom part of its output--the line beginning with
n partitions...  e.g., mine for sd0 looks like ("disklabel sd0"):

8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:   131068    24672    4.2BSD        0     0     0 	# (Cyl.  128*- 811*)
  b:    16384     8288      swap                    	# (Cyl.   43*- 128*)
  c:       32       64   unknown                    	# (Cyl.    0*- 0*)
  d:     8192       96       HFS                    	# (Cyl.    0*- 43*)
  e:     8318   155740   unknown                    	# (Cyl.  811*- 854*)

-allen

-- 
Allen Briggs - end killing - allen.briggs@vt.edu ** MacBSD == NetBSD/mac68k **