[Bug-tar] Option to disable or change device number checking.

[Rob Browning]

I'm using tar to perform monthly full and daily incremental backups.
This machine has a scsi card for some removable devices, uses sata
drives (which show up as scsi), and has some of the drives in cages so
that they can be easily added or removed when needed.  All of this
means that after any given boot, the number and ordering of devices on
the scsi bus may change.  Normally this isn't a problem because the
machine uses udev and scsi_id to create uniquely named /dev links for
each drive, links which point to the appropriate kernel devices.

However, this situation appears to cause problems with tar.  If I
understand the situation correctly, then every time the device order
changes, the next incremental backup ends up containing what amounts
to a full backup.  Is there any way around this?

In this situation, it's really the mount points (or unique device
symlinks) that are relevant, not the device numbers.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org; previously @cs.utexas.edu
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