Why can't I save/restore block devices?

[Dave Dykstra]

Saving might not be so hard, but restoring is a big problem because rsync
always generates a copy and then renames it in when finished.

- Dave

On Fri, Jul 05, 2002 at 03:38:55PM +0200, Ph. Marek wrote:
> On Friday 05 July 2002 13:31, Arthur van Leeuwen wrote:
> > Can you dd the partition (or parts of it) to a temporary store, and then
> > rsync that temporary image (of part of) the partition?
> No, don't have the space. And btw, why should I copy a perfectly seekable 
> device to a file just to compare it? And afterwards copy the modified file 
> back onto the partition?
> Sorry, no.
> 
> I think it would suffice to change the check IS_REG() in generator.c and get 
> the size not from stat() but from ioctl(GETBLKSIZE) [?]
> After all, a block device is nothing but a big file :-)
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Phil
>