backup and restore: what about device files?

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <1991Jun1.213927.28705 at thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> mouse at thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) writes:

>That depends on the utility.  BSD dump, for example, does; tar does not
>(in any incarnation I am aware of, at least).  Depending on what you
>are trying to do, sometimes one behavior is appropriate, sometimes the
>other.

GNUtar can be told to do devices.  However, when you restore you
may or may not want the devices back, since the reason you are restoring
may be that all or part of the original machine is no longer working.
Since they usually don't change often it is a good idea to backup
/dev by itself and omit it from backups of the files.  If the machine
has a floppy disk, you can use cpio to save them there, and restore
only if the same kernel is restored back to the same or an identical
machine.

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us