Idea for quick backup

[Guy]

To keep backup small, and boot time quick, I regularly move personal files from /home/tc to /home.

I think it may be a good idea to delete /home/tc from .filetool.lst.

I have not tried this in case something didn't work. I think it is worth trying.

Has anyone done this?

Does everything work ok?

[alu]

i let home/tc in .filetool.lst, but put everyting i don't want to be saved and which belongs to /home/tc in .xfiletool.lst; i symlink most of the directories which apps need (in order to keep them personalised; it regards email, browser, office directories and so on) from an external drive to /home/tc, and put all personal data on the external drive (they won't be saved in the backup); i am calling extensions with scripts (also symlinked from an external directory to /home/tc); as a result, my backup contents only the default files already available in /home/tc which i might have personalised either (such as .setbackground, .xsession); that strategy enables me to exit without doing a backup at each time, with the backup sized at less than 1 MB; i can boot very quickly, and then i load preferences and extensions using my scripts (i have several scripts which i can use depending on my needs)

[Guy]

I have now deleted /home/tc from .filetool.lst.

Backup is very quick, less than one second. Restoring these files during startup is also very quick, less than one second. (depending on what you have in those files.)

It works, but I haven't been using it long enough to see if anything does not work properly.

Hypothetically it should work the same.


I suggest others do this, and have a very quick backup, and restore.

You must use home=sda1 (or other partition). If not you will lose files.

Share your experience on this forum.

[OldAdamUser2]

This is my solution. I switched off backup by adding "export BACKUP=0" to /home/tc/.profile.

I put the Tiny Core base, my tce's, and my tgz's on sda1 (an ext2 partition) of my Eee 900 and home on sdb1 (an etx3 partition). Then I edited grub to add Tiny Core as follows:

title Tiny Core
        root (0x80,0)
   kernel /tiny/bzImage quiet tce=sda1 home=sdb1 opt=sda1 nodhcp
   initrd /tiny/tinycore.gz

The result is a very quick boot (<35 seconds) and a persistent installation that is giving me no problems. Xandros is still available if I choose to boot it.

[jur]

I have now deleted /home/tc from .filetool.lst.

I have been doing this from the start. There are no files from /opt either. Running persistent /home and /opt, and the only thing I back up is a symlink /etc/X11/xorg.conf which links to xorg.conf in /home/tc.

All my own data lives completely somewhere else. I don't need to back up anything else. If tc breaks, it doesn't take long at all to get going again. I don't even load any extensions any more. I just keep the whole lot in /tce/optional, and load locally with little script files. So my apps are only loaded when needed and at run time. This gives the fastest possible boot with no penalty as far as I can see.

Full throttle TC! 

[jpeters]

I have now deleted /home/tc from .filetool.lst.

I have been doing this from the start. There are no files from /opt either. Running persistent /home and /opt, and the only thing I back up is a symlink /etc/X11/xorg.conf which links to xorg.conf in /home/tc.

All my own data lives completely somewhere else. I don't need to back up anything else. If tc breaks, it doesn't take long at all to get going again. I don't even load any extensions any more. I just keep the whole lot in /tce/optional, and load locally with little script files. So my apps are only loaded when needed and at run time. This gives the fastest possible boot with no penalty as far as I can see.

Full throttle TC!  

makes tc fun again.   ( I still load home w/ config symlinks though for the pristine reboots)

[Guy]

I have now decided to use persistent /home and /opt, and modify the line in /home/tc/.profile to "export BACKUP=0", so I don't use backup at all.

I think this is the best way to run Tiny Core on a hard drive. No time wasted backing up when shutting down, or restoring when starting.

I have made extensions for any personal things, such as printer setup.

I had an extension for background images, but this is no longer necessary when using persistent /opt.

It is a good idea to include the "norestore" boot option. You can then tick the backup box occasionally, and backup personal files (and they won't be restored).

[clach04]

I'm using "regular" TC where home is always re-created on each boot (in memory). I'm using backup but with a similar approach as described earlier in this thread.

I've removed home/tc from the backup list file (/opt/.filetool.lst) but I did add .profile (which I then create from scratch) along with some other things I like.

Code: [Select]

tc@box:~$ cat /opt/.filetool.lst
opt/bootlocal.sh
opt/backgrounds
opt/.tcrc
opt/.filetool.lst
opt/.xfiletool.lst
home/tc/.profile
home/tc/.SciTEUser.properties
etc/asound.state

My .profile is created (I hope) in such a way that any updates to TC where the .profile is updated will not require an update to my .profile:

Code: [Select]

tc@box:~$ cat .profile
export BACKUP=0

if [ ${BACKUP} = 0 ]
then
    #myprofile=~/skeleton_profile
    #myprofile=/tmp/skeleton_profile
    myprofile=/tmp/modified_skel_profile
    sed 's/export BACKUP=1/export BACKUP=${BACKUP}/g' /etc/skel/.profile > ${myprofile}
    #sed -e 's/ BACKUP=1/ BACKUP=0/' /etc/skel/.profile >${myprofile}
    chmod 775 ${myprofile}
else
    myprofile=/etc/skel/.profile
fi

# This should be the last line, customization goes above this line
. ${myprofile}

I issue similar updates to the .xsession file via my .profile.

Chris