Re: I give up

[Olaf Hering <olaf@aepfle.de>]

On Tue, Apr 10, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Tuesday 10 April 2007, Olaf Hering wrote:
> >On Mon, Apr 09, Dave Dillow wrote:
> >> It's not /dev he's backing up -- its /home, /usr, and others. GNU tar
> >> saves the device and inode numbers from the {,l}stat() call on each
> >> file and decides it is a new file if either number changes from run to
> >> run.
> >
> >So fix tar to not do silly things.
> >Kernel major:minor numbers are not stable.

I forgot to add: '.. not stable across reboots.'

> YOU Tell that to the tar/star people, they are flabbergasted that its not 
> stable.  It apparently is for every other OS tar can be run on.

They probably have a point with the st_dev usage.
You better find out why your major:minor pairs keep jumping around.
Simply because the 'not stable across reboot' statement holds only for
added/removed disks and maybe if the detection order changes.
If your setup relies on a certain order, make sure the drivers get
loaded in a fixed order. Its not clear from your other mails what
exactly caused it. If its only due to a temporary change in
testkernels, noone can do anything about it.