Problems installing onto computer with ld0 as boot drive

[jmitchel <jmitchel%bigjar.com@localhost>]

Hello,

I'm trying to install NetBSD-8 Beta onto a Liva Mini-PC using a USB 
drive. Here's a link in case anyone's interested in what a Liva mini-pc 
is:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ECS-Elitegroup-Liva-Mini-1-0-Desktop-Discontinued-by-Manufacturer/232805133129?hash=item3634446b49%3Ag%3AvbkAAOSwWsxbIYUE&_sop=15&_nkw=Liva&_from=R40&rt=nc

(NOTE: I picked this link because it's ridiculously overpriced. I got 
mine for <$50. I figured it's price would mean it would stick around for 
awhile.)

The problem seems to be that:

a) The device requires UEFI
b) The USB drive's wedges show up first.

The fact that the USB drive's wedges show up causes all sorts of 
problems when the installer tries to create dk0, dk1, & dk2 because dk0 
and dk1 already exist and are mounted (they're on sd0 -- the USB drive). 
The error messages I see go away if I yank the USB drive right before 
partitioning, but, of course, this causes the install to die right after 
creating the wedges. And I'm not 100% sure the wedges are already 
created.

So, I guess I wanted to let people know about this, especially if it 
isn't just a problem with a machine with an ld0 boot drive. Also, I'm 
wondering if a later beta will fix this or if I should try installing 
from CD or DVD. Or doing something else that I haven't thought of. 
(Someone did post instructions onto how to create wedges manually -- I 
could boot from DVD/CD and follow them. Assuming the CD image is UEFI 
compliant (is that a thing?)

Unfortunately, if someone wants to see what actually happens, I'll have 
to take pictures as the device doesn't have a serial port that I can 
find. FreeBSD installs and shows uart0, but I can't find a 10 pin header 
anywhere on the board. I assume that it's part of the chipset and that 
the pins aren't brought out.

Please let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading.

Jason M.