backup and persistence confusion

[fhbc2003]

Hi, newbie here trying out TC in Virtualbox. I thought, after reading the pdf document and instructions online, that I could minimize the amount of data being backed up by using persistent /home and /opt directories. I have added these to the boot code, and have (several times) removed them from the onboot.lst file. However, both directories keep getting added back to that file. Could someone point out what I am doing wrong?

My boot code is as follows:

DEFAULT core
LABEL core
KERNEL /tce/boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/tce/boot/core.gz quiet  opt=sda1 home=sda1 waitusb=5:UUID="df41714d-3401-4c46-bc0d-26553fe81373" tce=UUID="df41714d-3401-4c46-bc0d-26553fe81373"
 

[gerald_clark]

That should be .filetool.lst not onboot.lst.  Then do a backup or you will continue to load the old backup file which contains /opt.

[fhbc2003]

My mistake: I was editing .filetool.lst; just typed in the wrong file name. In any event, I followed your instructions and things worked, after a minor fix. For others in my shoes: after I did the manual backup, when I tried to shut down the machine I got an error message saying the automatic backup had failed. (I had seen this before and ignored it.) This time I read the referenced error log; it said the backup file could not be empty - and mine was after I removed opt and home. So, I added a small directory just to have something in .filetool.lst; after this, everything worked the way it was supposed to. Many thanks!

[coreplayer2]

Hi fhbc2003
If you have persistent /opt and /home and no files in backup, then the question is why even have a backup?
Only reason to have a backup is to restore a customized/changed file on every boot.  If not, then why have a backup?
seems inefficient right?