[Q] tar - Mode or device-type changed

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Bosco So wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 BS> In the ongoing effort of figuring out how to resize
 BS> partitions, I've been playing with tar.  I tarred a whole
 BS> partition (hda2) while using another (hda3) as the root
 BS> disk.  The resultant tar file was stored on yet another
 BS> partition (hda5).  When I compared the tar file with the
 BS> content of the original partition, I got the following
 BS> messages.  Are these real errors?  Or are they an artifact
 BS> of the way Linux handles devices?  If so, then the last two
 BS> lines seem to be legitimate errors since /tmp and /var/tmp
 BS> are real directories.  Right?

 BS> dev/audio: Mode or device-type changed
 BS> dev/audio1: Mode or device-type changed
* * *
 BS> tmp: Mode differs
 BS> var/tmp: Mode differs

There is no point to using tar on things in the /dev hierarchy.  You should
exclude all of /dev when creating the archive.

The reason /tmp differs is probably because tar itself is using it.  There is
no point to archiving /tmp or /var/tmp, which are, well, temporary.
 
-- Mike