Bug 25620

Summary:	tar does not handle existing large minor numbers
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	Vladimir Tchoukharev <chu>
Component:	bin	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	Closed FIXED
Severity:	Affects Only Me
Priority:	Normal
Version:	4.2-STABLE
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description Vladimir Tchoukharev 2001-03-09 01:50:01 UTC

While making a copy of root fs by means of tar, I received:
tar: dev/sa0.ctl: minor number too large; not dumped

How-To-Repeat: 
# ls -l /dev/sa0.ctl
crw-rw----  2 root  wheel   14, 0x20000000  8 ÆÅ× 23:31 /dev/sa0.ctl
# tar -cf - -C /dev/ . > /dev/null
tar: sa0.ctl: minor number too large; not dumped

Comment 1 Poul-Henning Kamp freebsd_committer

2001-03-28 18:44:37 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed

You are right, as it says: it doesn't. 

The tar format is a semi fixed width field format, and the field 
for device numbers were designed for 16 bit (8 major, 8 minor) 
and can not absorb our 32 bit (8 major, 16+8 minor) numbers.