Help with udev's secret mounts

[rir <rirans@comcast.net>]

Udev's secret remounting of /dev at /dev/.static/dev gives me pause.
How IS that done, anyway?  

I am interested in using find and cpio to make a root filesystem 
backup.  How should I handle the /dev tree?  If I just grab the 
run-time /dev it will become the boot-time /dev of my restored 
system.  I don't understand if this has any ramifications or what
they are.

I can back up my root by booting into another linux, but that is
inconvenient.

It seems that I could just set udev_root to something like "/udev"
in /etc/udev.conf and that would work.  That doesn't appeal because
of decades of finger memory for "/dev".

Thanks.

Be well,
Rob


Script started on Fri Feb 23 22:04:38 2007

vaph:/# uname -a
Linux vaph.private 2.6.8-2-686-smp #1 SMP Thu May 19 17:27:55 JST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux


vaph:/# cd /dev/.static


vaph:/dev/.static# find . -print
.
./dev
./dev/hdd
./dev/mem
./dev/hdd1
./dev/kmem
./dev/hdd2
./dev/null
./dev/hdd3
./dev/port
./dev/hdd4
./dev/zero

[ deletia  ]

./dev/log
./dev/apm_bios
./dev/raw1394


vaph:/dev/.static# find . -xdev -print
.
./dev


vaph:/dev/.static# mount   ############ no /dev/.static/dev listed
/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda9 on /usr type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda6 on /var type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda7 on /tmp type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda10 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda12 on /priv type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda13 on /pub type ext3 (rw,noatime)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,size=10M,mode=0755)
/dev/sdb3 on /mnt type ext3 (rw)


vaph:/dev/.static# exit
exit

Script done on Fri Feb 23 22:05:18 2007