* T o n g mlist4suntong@yahoo.com [20080711 17:46]:
Do I need to backup the /dev directory when backing up my root fs?
FYI, I thought udev would populate it on boot up so I didn't backup the /dev directory. However, I got
Warning: unable to open initial console
and the boot froze.
Going through all the possible reasons in http://kerneltrap.org/node/2205 did I realize that my /dev directory should be backed up & populated.
Well, static devices can be found in /dev/.static/dev and if configured/used also in /lib/udev/devices.
What's really important are the null, zero, console and tty[0-9] devices which are all easy to generate/restore using MAKEDEV in case you lose them.
So basically it's not necessary to backup /dev as long as you know how to recover it ;) - but as /dev is usually less than 1MB size it won't hurt to place it in your backups as well. ;)
hth && regards, -mika-