cp /dev/hda3 /dev/hdb3

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 04:46:45AM +0200, smurspm1 at xs4all.nl wrote:
> I have a HD that was giving error messages and in general not
> bootable/workable.
> 
> So I wanted to make a backup of the documents on that hard drive. I
> entered this command:cp  /dev/hda3 /dev/hdb3. So far so good.

You have replaced the device node /dev/hdb3 with the device node
/dev/hda3. This has no effect on the data in those devices, and merely
has the effect of confusing you.

To repair, run this as root:

  cd /dev
  MAKEDEV hdb

(Or probably just rebooting would clear it up too, since Ubuntu uses
udev to generate the contents of /dev dynamically.)

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                    [cjwatson at canonical.com]