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Use the --exclude or --exclude-from options of the tar command to list exclusions.OR use the -xdev option of find to avoid crossing file system boundaries.
– Chris Nava
Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 16:49
I understand that /dev is not required to backup, and I am familiar with the --exclude argument. My true problem is that the symlinks in fstab and menu.lst aren't usable when I restore to a blank disk, because the symlinks do not exist at that moment (we're on a LiveCD during restoring). So simply reading the original fstab will fail the mounts I'm trying to do. I could mount every partition manually but I would like to automate this by using /dev/sdx. The same problem goes for grub which also has by-id symlinks written in it.
– SK.
Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 17:02
Just don't restore the tar file over the existing filesystem. Extract to a temporary location and then move the things you want to keep back to their correct location.
– Chris Nava
Commented Mar 14, 2011 at 4:42

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