freebsd stable - Feb 2010 - 8.0 install fails to create filesystem ("unable to find device node")

Greetings everyone. I'm trying to install FreeBSD 8.0 from Disk1 on
ThinkPad T40, so far unsuccessfully.

Here are the setup steps:
Installer complains that "77520/16/63" may not be a good geometry for
ad0, proposes "4864/255/63" instead (both eventually lead to failure).
I create a single disk-wide slice (ad0s1), choose a boot manager, set up
standard labeling for ad0s1, choose distributions.
The setup tries to create filesystem and fails with this message:

    Unable to find device node for /dev/ad0s1b in /dev!

Aside from debug messages, there's this on second VT:

    GEOM: ad0: geometry does not match label (255h,63s != 16h,63s).

I also tried to setup 7.0 (w/o dangerously dedicated slicing), and then
freebsd-update to 8.0. On first reboot required by freebsd-update the
system drops to bootloader prompt and fails to find init on any of the
filesystems.

Help. Is there anything I can do to install 8.0?

The dmesg of this machine (as seen by 7.0) is at [1]. I'll provide any
further information -- just name it.

[1] http://tx97.net/~magv/dmesg-t40.70.txt

> Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:29:26 +0200
> From: Vitaly Magerya <vmagerya@gmail.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
> 
> Greetings everyone. I'm trying to install FreeBSD 8.0 from Disk1 on
> ThinkPad T40, so far unsuccessfully.
> 
> Here are the setup steps:
> Installer complains that "77520/16/63" may not be a good geometry
for
> ad0, proposes "4864/255/63" instead (both eventually lead to
failure).
> I create a single disk-wide slice (ad0s1), choose a boot manager, set up
> standard labeling for ad0s1, choose distributions.
> 
> The setup tries to create filesystem and fails with this message:
> 
>     Unable to find device node for /dev/ad0s1b in /dev!
Are you doing a 'W'rite in the labeling tools? I'm guess that you
are
not, but I wanted to be sure. You don't want to.

You say that you are doing the default partitions. If so, the 'b'
partition should be swap. It should not get 'newfs'ed. No file system
needed (or wanted) there. This tells me that something was wrong in the
partition setup if it THINKS that there is a need to newfs partition
'b'. 
> Aside from debug messages, there's this on second VT:
> 
>     GEOM: ad0: geometry does not match label (255h,63s != 16h,63s).
This is a known issue, but cosmetic in almost all cases.

I suspect that you are doing something wrong, but it's hard to figure
out just what it might be.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
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