By making substantial use of KNOPPIX-DATA on a reiserfs formatted /dev/sda3 I have managed to customise KNOPPIX at boot pretty well as preferred.
However: one final (almost trivial) alteration eludes me.
I would like to tweak the boot init executable file which I think is the one that resides in minirt.gz.
Using a temporary ext2 filesystem as my vehicle for managing this:
1) copy minirt.gz to temp and de-compress minirt.gz using gunzip: this yields a file minirt
2) move to a dofferent subdirectory under temp and extract minirt here with the command cpio -idm < {pathto}/minirt
3) the init file is seen here: edit it - (I'm just tweaking the messages sent to screen at boot) - and save it
4) chmod a+x init and chmod a+w init, as originally found
5) wrap the while thing as a revised minirt to a different subdirectory under temp using find . | cpio -o > {newpathto}/minirt
6) compress the new minirt using gzip --recursive --rsyncable (not sure whether either switch is actiually required)
and finally
7) save the old minirt.gz as minirt.orig.gz in case of failure (see below!)
8 ) copy the new minirt.gz to replace the original.
Then reboot, hoping for success.
But actually get failure at boot with the error message:
"kernel panic - not syncing - unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)"
I feel I'm almost there at my ideal customised KNOPPIX, and without the hugely complex time-consuming and likely error-prone process of re-mastering.
Has anybody else tried this easier approach and successfully replaced minirt.gz with their own version?
Thank you for any insight or refined practice for 1-8 above .. ..
Gigabyte GA-Q170M-D3H-GSM LGA1151 DDR4 Desktop Motherboard (No I/O Plate)
$39.99
ASRock B550M Pro SE AM4 DDR4 SATA 6Gb/s 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 Micro ATX Motherboard
$84.99
MSI H81M-P33 Desktop Motherboard Intel MicroATX Socket LGA1150 USB 3.0 W/IO
$26.99
Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S/AC Wifi 8th/9th Gen Intel 1151 Motherboard Bulk
$33.43
Asus Prime H310M-A R2.0 Intel LGA 1151 DDR4 Desktop Motherboard
$54.99
ASUS H87I-PLUS, LGA 1150, Intel Motherboard w/ IO Shield
$39.00
Micro ATX Desktop Motherboard ASUS H110M-C LGA 1151
$31.95
GIGABYTE GA-X99-UD4P MOTHERBOARD, M.2 SATA3, LGA2011-3, DDR4, & I/O Shield
$69.99
MSI PRO B650-P WiFi AMD AM5 DDR5 WiFi 6E ProSeries Motherboard
$107.30
ASUS ROG STRIX H270I GAMING Motherboard Intel H270 LGA 1151 DDR4 M.2 Mini ITX
$159.99