HD Install :: .xinitrc & bootlocal.sh not loading



I must have some part of my configuration wrong, or have misunderstood the directions on some of the other posts.

I have made an opt directory and mydsl directory as described in the wiki under persistance.  But, when my system reboots, it does not run the .xinitrc or bootlocal.sh scripts. The ones contained on the ramdisk are the unmodified ones.

Where do I save the modified scripts so the system will read / load them during boot?

Or, do I have to modify the boot loader?  I have the following as my defualt on the grub loader:

title DSL
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda1 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi pictures=/mnt/hde1/ scripts=/mnt/hda1/scripts frugal acpi=off restore=hda1
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

also, I am trying to get the system to auto mount a compact flash card (hde1)... I am trying to configure an old machine as a digital picture frame, so my ultimate goal is to mount the cf card and run qiv (or other slide show program) from a boot script.  

I am fairly new to Linux (I have run a linux server on my home network for awhile) and figured this would be a good way to learn more about the system.

Thanks in advance.
You'll need to add opt=XXXX and home=XXXX in that kernel line in order to use persistent directories.

WARNING: The last time I tried to use both opt and home on the same partition I lost everything in my persistent home. That was a long time ago, and things might have changed since, but I thought I'd mention it.
If the only reason to use a persistent opt is for bootlocal.sh, you can just manage that with the backup and skip the persistent opt. All your scripts can be stored in your persistent home.

Auto mounting a drive should be pretty easy to do from /opt/bootlocal.sh, as long as the drive is inserted when you boot, and is always detected as hde1:
mount /dev/hde1

If it's not detected as hde1, it won't be listed in /etc/fstab and therefore not mounted with that command. You could probably write a script to auto-detect which device to use if it gets seen as something different from boot to boot.

original here.