Copying files to /etc deletes contents of /var and /tmp

[Jon Drews]

OpenBSD 4.2
Installed from Official CDROM's
Installed on IBM 600E Thinkpad

Hi all:

  I have a perplexing problem here. After a new install, if I copy
files to /etc, then on rebooting the laptop both /var and /tmp are
empty. This phenomena happened on OpenBSD 4.1 too. I Googled and found
no else had this difficulty. In the current case I copied
/etc/printcap over. What might be going wrong? NOTE: If I just edit
the files then everything is just fine.

-- 
Kind regards,
Jonathan