metavoid,

To get a 67meg iso of uncompressed 188meg knoppix I removed all packages except:

standard zlib1g install ok installed
standard libstdc++5 install ok installed
standard libmagic1 install ok installed
standard liblocale-gettext-perl install ok installed
standard libgcc1 install ok installed
standard file install ok installed
standard apt install ok installed
required util-linux install ok installed
required update install ok installed
required textutils install ok installed
required tar install ok installed
required sysvinit install ok installed
required slang1 install ok installed
required shellutils install ok installed
required setserial install ok installed
required sed install ok installed
required procps install ok installed
required perl-base install ok installed
required passwd install ok installed
required ncurses-bin install ok installed
required ncurses-base install ok installed
required mount-aes install ok installed
required modutils install ok installed
required mbr install ok installed
required mawk install ok installed
required makedev install ok installed
required login install ok installed
required libuuid1 install ok installed
required libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 install ok installed
required libss2 install ok installed
required libreadline4 install ok installed
required libperl5.8 install ok installed
required libpam0g install ok installed
required libpam-runtime install ok installed
required libpam-modules install ok installed
required libncurses5 install ok installed
required libdb1-compat install ok installed
required libcomerr2 install ok installed
required libc6 install ok installed
required libblkid1 install ok installed
required hostname install ok installed
required gzip install ok installed
required grep install ok installed
required findutils install ok installed
required fileutils install ok installed
required e2fsprogs install ok installed
required e2fslibs install ok installed
required dselect install ok installed
required dpkg install ok installed
required diff install ok installed
required debianutils install ok installed
required coreutils install ok installed
required bsdutils install ok installed
required bash install ok installed
required base-passwd install ok installed
required base-files install ok installed
required adduser install ok installed
optional usleep-knoppix install ok installed
optional sslwrap purge ok installed
optional smartsuite deinstall ok config-files
optional scanpartitions-knoppix install ok installed
optional rebuildfstab-knoppix install ok installed
optional perl-doc deinstall ok config-files
optional mozilla-xft deinstall ok config-files
optional mkdesktophdicons-knoppix install ok installed
optional madwifi purge ok installed
optional libtext-iconv-perl install ok installed
optional libdb3 install ok installed
optional libcap1 install ok installed
optional libattr1 install ok installed
optional libacl1 install ok installed
optional kernel-image-2.4.27 install ok installed
optional hwsetup install ok installed
optional hotplug-knoppix install ok installed
optional hotplug install ok installed
optional debconf install ok installed
important libtext-wrapi18n-perl install ok installed
important libtext-charwidth-perl install ok installed
important libconsole install ok installed
important gcc-3.3-base install ok installed
important debconf-i18n install ok installed
extra slang1a-utf8 install ok installed
extra libcupsys2 deinstall ok config-files
wavtools install ok installed
sysvinit-knoppix hold ok config-files

I boot with cheatcode '2' to get run init level 2. fsck says / has corrupt superblock but it seems to work. This is the smallest I have achieved without getting a catastrophic error during boot. I made my kicklist include all packages except 'required'. I then had to add the following packages for install to the end of the kick list:

apt+
libgcc1+
libstdc++5+
gcc-3.3-base+
bash+
libcap1+
libdb3+
coreutils+
libacl1+
libattr1+
sysvinit+
libconsole+
hwsetup+
usleep-knoppix+
rebuildfstab-knoppix+
hotplug-knoppix+
slang1a-utf8+
zlib1g+
hotplug+
mkdesktophdicons-knoppix+
scanpartitions-knoppix+
debconf+
debconf-i18n+
file+
liblocale-gettext-perl+
libtext-iconv-perl+
libtext-wrapi18n-perl+
libtext-charwidth-perl+
libmagic1+
kernel-image-2.4.27+

I made scripts to 1) clear my remaster directory, copy the original to the remaster, 2) remove packages, 3) create compressed, and 4) create iso.

Let me know how this works for you. As I continue to work the list smaller and without errors I expect I will soon have scripts that I can post.

Steve

p.s. when I use apt-get during trial runs I use the -s option so I can see what it thinks it should do about package dependences. That's how I created the override install list. When it is time to run without the -s I use apt-get -y --force-yes --purge remove `cat kick.txt`