rsync - Jun 2005 - Feature request: rsync of device content

Hi list,

I often save the content of a hardware device (a harddisk partition with a
not-so-stable non-unix OS on it) on a backup disk which is connected over the
network.
Until now I used 'dd' to make a clone file of the device (dd
if=/dev/hda2 of=disk.raw bs=2M) and then I copied or rsynced this file with the
network copy.
It would be nice if rsync would also be able to synchronise the content of a
device, i.e. handle the device like a regular file. Of course only if this is
requested
with a special command line option.
I had a short look to the rsync source code and I think it could be done by
adding some code at the same positions like for the -D/--devices option.
I tried a little hack by my own and got the client to read the device file but
the server aborted with a error message (apologies for not providing a message).
To get this running someone needs more knowledge about rsync and about handling
device files in C. I don't have much knowledge about either of this two,
but maybe it is just a short thing for someone with more knowledge in this.

Best regards,
Martin Scharrer

On 6/11/05, Martin Scharrer wrote:
> It would be nice if rsync would also be able to synchronise the content of
a device, i.e.
> handle the device like a regular file. Of course only if this is requested
> with a special command line option.
The idea of a block-device-rsync comes up from time to time.  April
was the last time I saw it pop up and I gave a summary of what others
had said:

http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2005-April/012196.html

The consensus seems to be that this would be a great idea for a
librsync-based standalone tool rather than rsync itself.  However, I
have still seen no signs that anyone (including myself) has had the
time to build such a tool.

  -- Steve