Should I exclude all 'dev/' or only 'dev/pts/' during full server tar backup?

I'm curious why in all backup tutorials I found tar command excludes among others /dev/pts and not all of /dev/ Why would I want to backup anything under dev?


Solution 1:

There is generally no need to backup anything under dev, since it's mostly generated upon boot by udev. I did a lot of OS migrations by simply rsyncing everything except stuff like proc, dev, sys etc.

Just make sure when you setup your backups, ALWAYS test a recovery, to see if everything is functioning properly.