Hi, I have a compressed .tgz file, say sample.tgz, which contains the block/char devices which are under /dev folder.
If I do "gunzip -c sample.tgz | tar xvf -", all the files and block/char devices are displayed in the console but the block/char devices are not copied/created under the working directory.

For creating the .tgz file, I used the following steps:
1. tar cvf sample.tar *
2. gzip -c sample.tar >> sample.tgz

Any help?

Thanks in Advance,
Chris

device files are not physical objects thay are more like an idea, u cant copy them thay have to be made.

Thanks. Currenty I am creating these devices manually. Any idea copying/compressing those char/block devices.

Thanks
Chris

What do you mean "compress char/block devices"?

Why do you want to do this?

Entries (inodes) under /dev do not represent files. There is no data associated with them. tar records data for files.

The /dev inode entry contains two pieces of information: a major device number and a minor device number. In general, the major device number tells the kernel what kind of a device it is, say, disk, printer, or tty. The kernel uses this to select the driver for that device. The minor device number tells the driver which individual device of this type the inode refers to.

I believe that cpio will record the inode info, even if there is no data.

Hi Eager,

Actually I am creating a Live CD and I am able to boot from the CD. Now it is the time build the root file system for the target. I have created all the required directories (/bin, /sbin, /etc, /dev, /usr, /lib and etc) and copied all the requried files under each dirs. I am trying to compress these folders and decompress under /dev/hda. ( Is it the right way? ) When I do the "lilo -r /disk" (disk is the mount point for /dev/hda), I am getting error message as the /dev/hda is not available. Anyway, now am creating the nodes manually and installing the linux.

Is there anyway to automate creating the nodes?


Thanks
Chris