install/41455: CD drive stalls during install

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>Number:         41455
>Category:       install
>Synopsis:       CD drive stalls during install
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    install-manager
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon May 18 07:10:00 +0000 2009
>Originator:     Nino Ivanov
>Release:        5.0 and 4.x and maybe even 3.x
>Organization:
>Environment:
(Do not have it here, but it is just standard NetBSD, no custom compilations.)
>Description:
Dear Sir or Madam,

I experience on one machine (a laptop, Acer Aspire 3634 WLMi, an i386 machine 
with single-core Celeron processor) the problem that installation from the CD 
stalls and breaks off at some point.

Booting the installation CD and setting up everything including formatting the 
disk works fine. But when the sets shall be extracted, the drive speeds up, the 
sets are read until some point, and then I can hear the drive spin down again, 
and I get failure messages for the sets - that they could not be read.

The severity is non-critical (due to the workaround, see below), but in my 
opinion the priority is high - if others decide it is a problem with NetBSD's 
installation sets rather than their drive they might actually give up trying to 
install it.
>How-To-Repeat:
Try installing NetBSD with the official i386 CD-ROM on an Acer Aspire 3634 WLMi.
>Fix:
Place the image from the CD-ROM on a USB-stick on some working NetBSD machine 
(I think it is even possible from the installation disk):

dd if=/dev/cd0d of=/dev/sd0d

Then, when you are about to install the sets, plug in the USB-stick. The kernel 
messages will mess up your screen, but moving with the arrow keys around will 
re-paint the options that you can select. Select installation from CD-ROM, but 
change the drive to sd0a instead of the pre-set cd0a. Everything will be 
installed normally, and even quicker than using the real CD-ROM.

I think you can make an FTP-install, too, but the above method will save you 
some bandwidth.