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Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 09:07:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jim Durham <durham@durham>
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To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Nightmare. 
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On Tue, 13 Aug 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> > > tar -cvf /dev/rfd0a /
> > 
> > This has utterly trashed your boot device (and / lies there.)  I seriuosly
> > doubt that you can do anything but reinstall.
> 
> Probably the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons.
> 
> >What happened is that you have overwritten the filesystem layout from the
> >same filesystem you were "backing up" and at that *while* you were backing
> >it up.  There shouldn't be anything useful on /dev/rfd0a.
> 
> Not unless these systems are running with their root filesystems on
> floppies, no. :-) That would be possible, of course, but insane as
> even a stand-alone system would want to use MFS for its root
> filesystem given that a floppy would be far too unreliable.
> 
> 					Jordan
> 

How about:

tar -cvf / dev/rfd0a /   (while sitting in / )

I'm not sure you can open / as a plain file, but,
I'm not prepared to verify... 8-) .


-Jim Durham