How to remove packages from Knoppix without breaking the whole system.

Hello,

I'm trying to make a slim remastered version of Knoppix 6.2. I need to have only few features,such as Dosemu and few others. I don't need the graphic part at all,Dosemu should works on the Command Line Interface. Although I've removed many packages such as Java and OpenOffice, the ISO image created is too big,it is almost 600 MB. I would like to reduce it to about 300 MB. If I remove the wrong packages,the system will not work properly. Can you explain how to make a safe streamlining ? These are the commands I give to make the iso :

rm -rf /mnt/linux/knx/source/KNOPPIX/.rr_moved

mkisofs -R -U -V "KNOPPIX.net filesystem" -publisher "KNOPPIX www.knoppix.net" \
-hide-rr-moved -cache-inodes -no-bak -pad /mnt/linux/knx/source/KNOPPIX \
| nice -5 /usr/bin/create_compressed_fs - 65536 > /mnt/linux/knx/master/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX

cd /mnt/linux/knx/master

find -type f -not -name sha1sums -not -name boot.cat -not -name isolinux.bin \
-exec sha1sum '{}' \; > KNOPPIX/sha1sums


mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "KNOPPIX" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \
-boot-info-table -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat \
-hide-rr-moved -o /mnt/linux/knx/knoppix.iso /mnt/linux/knx/master

I've removed Perl and the ISO image has been 300 MB,its good.

Are you getting rid of all the gui applications?
If so, shouldn't you start with a non-graphic system?

I know I should do it, but I know that all roads lead to Rome,too :)

One road would be better than many.

Are you really sure ? Someone said :

Die Slowly

He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience,
dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,
dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,
die slowly.

He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops,
dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.

Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead
to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Pablo Neruda.

Pablo would die slowly trying all the roads to Rome.
He would do better to consult a map and choose just one from just a few.
Does Pablo have a brother, Sancho?

And, what does

dotting ones "it’s"

mean, anyway?

Very nice poetry :) and so true

Pablo supposed to does not have a complete map of the roads :)

@Marietto

I wish you good luck in your endeavor.

I do not have as much experience and skill as some of
your other respondees. What I have to offer is a counsel
of caution.

My experience with removing things from a robust working
system, such as Knoppix, is such as to make me wary of
removing certain functions I deem to be superfluous
to my needs and taste.

Very often in removing supposedly superfluous programs,
I end up with an unworkable system. Not only unworkable,
but I don't know what to 'put back'. This is usually the
result of the removal of a program previousy shared by
the program removed and the remaining system. This is
a self-inflicted case of 'dependency hell'.

If you keep good records and images you can survive this
difficulty, but I am not so well organized as all that.

I had in mind you might be better off a with non-graphic
single-user linux system. There used to be a number of
these, but now I can't readily find any. Live CD's for
the purpose of disaster recovery or forensics or security
purposes used to be very common.

It looks like this genre may have been superseded now
by lightweight graphic systems, such as lxde, xfce and
others. Perhaps the baggage in these systems is much
lighter now than previously, with not so much overhead
above the command-line essentials.

Avenues apart from downsizing Knoppix, might include
building up from scratch, ala linux-from-scratch,
and/or using neat bare-bones linux-building blocks
like busybox.

I'm sure you'll get to Rome, one way or another or both.

This is a modern-day version of the type of
program that used to be made minimal by being
command-line only.

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

@Marietto

You might want to try the Finnix distro from http://www.finnix.org/
It is only 120 MB and is targeted at sys admins. It is Debian unstable based and uses some of Knoppix hardware auto detection scripts. It should be very good at auto configuring same as Knoppix - gives us a feedback if you try it

Thanks boys,but I've already found a solution : I've created an ISO image of about 300 MB,that's good. I changed the boot options,so that it boots in run level 2,toram and with the italian language. Thanks for your cooperation,it is rarely to find people available to help like you.

It's not important,but could be a good idea to start my script after having typed the user's password. I tried to put the configurations files (.bash_profile and .dosemu in /etc/skel and in /home/knoppix,but when the computer starts the /home/knoppix folder is empty and the script can't start.