I have done a 'knoppix-type' installation, booted into it, customized it (apt-get install, remove, etc. etc.) and would like to install Debain directly which booted to the knoppix-type installation. Make sense?

The knoppix-installer is not very willing to do this however. I did link / to /KNOPPIX but it halts when trying to copy /proc. I then attempted to use rsync instead of cp in the hd module so that I could exclude /proc but this isn't working either. Any ideas how to run knoppix-installer from a 'knoppix-type' install?

My reasoning behind this is simple. You can easily customize knoppix to your own tastes, have all of the autoconfiguration and THEN install a Debian system. No recompressing of the .iso is necessary and (and I think this is the best part) if you hose up your install you simply boot back into the knoppix-type install and reinstall. No need to remove apps you don't want and retweak your desktop as it's already done.

This way you can always do apt-get upgrade to your knoppix-type install and your install-from partition will always be up to date unlike the static file system of a cd which is quickly outdated.

You could of course keep a .tgz of that partition handy in case you hosed it up too.