Remastering CD Puzzlement

[Alphonsu]

Hello Fellow Remasterers,

I've been wondering why one would go through all the steps,
- swapfile
- all the mounts ("bind" or otherwise).
- chroot

which make the procedure an order of magnitude more
- complicated
- error prone
- lengthy

instead of
- just simply staying in the original environment
- making the desired changes

AND replacing
cp -rp /KNOPPIX/* $PFAD/knx/source/KNOPPIX

with
cp -rp /UNIONFS/* $PFAD/knx/source/KNOPPIX
rsync -aH ...
...

when done setting up the new (to be remastered) system before
the "regular" steps,
genisoimage -input-charset ...
etc.

I'm probably missing something (big), but so far any
remastered CD of v7.0.4 set up according to my wishes
based on the above simpler procedure works without a hitch.

Thanks

P.S.
1. My "wishes" above would be, for example, removing
a few "non-essential" (for me) packages (like cuneiform-common,
smbclient, etc.) to replace iceweasel and make room for
the latest full firefox (15.0.1).

2. I notice some other people have provided "non-chroot" solutions.
They've been harder to follow for me as being graphical (as opposed to command line).
I apologize to the authors for any overlap and any similarities are purely
coincidental.

[Werner P. Schulz]

cp -rp /UNIONFS/* $PFAD/knx/source/KNOPPIX
rsync -aH ...

What about "cp" and "rsync"?

rsync -aH /UNIONFS/* $PFAD/knx/source/KNOPPIX

will do the job.

I use the new generated ISO only within a flash disk installation and didn't describe, how to build a new remastered CD using "rsync UNIONFS".

But it is also possible to create a CD like your suggestion and omit the use of an USB stick.

[Capricorny]

2. I notice some other people have provided "non-chroot" solutions.
They've been harder to follow for me as being graphical (as opposed to command line).
I apologize to the authors for any overlap and any similarities are purely
coincidental.

I don't think you have followed the discussions here very closely, for example following forrester's scripts and developments from that.

I have posted updated scripts, CLI-only. (But I think they might be given a graphical wrapping , too.)

I have successfully used Qemu running the ISO image even doing the whole remastering in a virtual machine. Bypassing any burning or initial installs. But it is faster (and I think simpler and safer) to create a USB install in Qemu, boot that and do the remastering stuff on a mounted HD partition.