Chris G. Demetriou wrote:

> So, the following ports implement md_copy_filesystem():
> 
> 	alpha	arm32	bebox
> 	i386	mac68k	pmax
> 
> All do approximately the same set of stuff: copy the root file
> system's contents over to the hard disk.  In the case of many/most
> installations, that's the contents of the ramdisk in the booted
> installation kernel.
> 
> Is there any reason that this is done, for any of these architectures,
> any more?

I've been looking into this myself over the last couple of days, with
the aim of turfing the function for the pmax at least.  This would also
fix PR 7562, where pax barfs copying an NFS mounted root to the target
root filesystem.

Again for the pmax, the supported install methods are:

 + The diskimage with a ramdisk kernel inside it.
 + A ramdisk installation kernel
 + An NFS client root filesystem.

I can't see a situation where not having a copy of the ramdisk root
on the target is going to cause problems.  I'm not familiar enough
with the other ports to know if there's any other supported install
methods, although netboot of an ramdisk install kernel would also
be ok.  When I got a chance, I was just going to remove the guts of
md_copy_filesystem() and see what happened.

Simon.