OT: Need Unix tech in Springfield, Missouri area

[der Mouse]

> Good point.  I think that tar to a device requires a block device as
> a target,

Not in my experience; I've run tar to tape devices, which are
character special devices, often enough.  (Of course, this is not to
say that there don't exist tar implementations bizarre enough to insist
on block devices.  Just that I've not run into any, and any claim that
"tar" (to the extent that "tar" is a single thing) requires them is
false.)

And tar definitely knows how to write to a pipe; you could always do
	tar cf - ... | cat > /dev/...
though I suspect most tar implementations will work fine with
	tar cf - ... > /dev/...
even if they won't accept
	tar cf /dev/... ...

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