Strange behavior while copying files

[Igor Khavkine <i_khavki@alcor.concordia.ca>]

Hi, I'm trying to copy a large directory /sub to a partition mounted
on /local. /sub contains a functioning Hurd filesystem produced
from the initial tarball. I used this command

# cd /sub
# cp -a * /local/

First, it's very slow, but that's a known problem. After a while it
spurts out these messages and finishes:

cp: cannot create regular file `/local/servers/exec': Computer bought the farm
cp: cannot create special file `/local/servers/crash-suspend': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create special file `/local/servers/crash-kill': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create special file `/local/servers/password': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create special file `/local/servers/crash-dump-core': Read-only file
system
cp: cannot create symbolic link `/local/servers/crash': Read-only file system
cp: preserving times for `/local/servers': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create directory `/local/share': Read-only file system
cp: preserving times for `/local/src': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create directory `/local/tmp': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create symbolic link `/local/usr': Read-only file system
cp: cannot create directory `/local/var': Read-only file system

Obviously there's some problem whily copying /sub/servers/exec (in /sub
there were passive translators on all nodes that a root filesystem would
have). The strange thing happens when this is done, if I look in my
/ I have a ton of pty* and tty* device files created there, even though
I copied no files to or from /.

Why does this happen? Also if I can run a debug version of the ext2fs
server on /local, where should I set a breakpoint to catch this?

Igor