untar root fs gives: mknot: operation not permitted

freeindy · 07-30-2008, 06:07 AM

Hi,

I have a rootfs in a tarball (rootfs.tar.gz). When I untar it on my home directory I get following errors:

Code:

dev/
dev/ttyS41
tar: dev/ttyS41: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
dev/tty52
tar: dev/tty52: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
dev/zero
tar: dev/zero: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
...
...

I am untaring the packed file as user. Now, I know that if I use sudo then it works. BUT, is it possible to untar it as a normal user?

Thanks,

Indy

Pearlseattle · 07-30-2008, 08:47 AM

As user X you probably don't have write-permission on the directory /dev - only root has it, or? You could therefore sudo to root and assign user X write-access to the directory.

freeindy · 07-31-2008, 01:59 AM

Pearlseattle,

That is fine but this tarball is to be extracted in say $(HOME). This is for future use when exporting the directory as the root filesystem for a target system. What I want is that be able to extract the tarball as a normal user. Even if for example to extract it and compress it again. This mknod operation stops me from doing it.

Pearlseattle · 07-31-2008, 02:19 AM

Got it - sorry.

freeindy · 08-01-2008, 04:11 AM

no worries mate. thanks for trying though. You never know

smoked kipper · 08-02-2008, 12:57 PM

You have to be root to create device nodes.

jschiwal · 08-02-2008, 01:55 PM

The device nodes are created dynamically when the computer boots up so you shouldn't have even backed up /dev. However, there are files and directories by various owners so you will need to extract the tarball as root. Another problem occurs if the directory is extracted before the files. You may not have permissions to create files inside the directory. Another thing is that the /home partition may be (and should be) mounted with the "nodev" option which would prevent extracting /dev in someone's home directory.