Copying device special files

[Arturo Perez]

Assuming that I KNOW the kernel can support various devices that aren't
defined in the file /etc/makedev, what is the easiest way to copy the
directory /dev? What I am doing is copying one system disk to another using
tar(1) but tar won't copy special files.  I don't much like the idea of
dumping to tape and restoring because that takes something like 24 hours.
Any suggestions?
-- 
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