[CentOS] scp partition "not a regular file"

Mon Sep 29 16:22:03 UTC 2008
henry ritzlmayr <centos at rc0.at>

Hi list, 

should it be possible to scp a partition with this command:

scp /dev/sda7 backupserver:/backup/sda7.img

I always get "not a regular file" - which is a clear and understandable
error, but my googling tells me that some people are doing this - and it
seems to work - at least at their systems.

I know that I can avoid this by simply doing

dd if=/dev/sda7 | ssh backupserver dd of=/backup/sda7.img

So its not a big deal - just curious. 

System here is a fully updated CentOS 5.2
x86_64 if that matters

any thoughts?

Henry