It sounds like you are quite accomplished and competant & know what you are doing so I will give an abbreviated description.
Extracting the knoppix CD and chrooting into the extracted enviornment is quite simple. You will need this .TAR.GZ http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/remas...r_0.1-6.tar.gz which is a set of remastering scripts from Fabian Franz & Klaus Knopper. I have a 40GB /dev/hda that I use for scratch work & format regularly.
I boot off the Knoppix 3.6 CD using cheatcodes knoppix 2 vga=normal.
I partition hda 40GB as follows:
- hda1 swap 1GB
- hda2 ext3 6GB
- hda3 ext 20GB
Code:
mkswap /dev/hda1
swapon /dev/hda1
mke2fs -vj /dev/hda2
mke2fs -vj /dev/hda3
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2
mkdir /mnt/hda2/remaster
cd /mnt/hda2
wget http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/remas...r_0.1-6.tar.gz
tar zxvf remaster_0.1-6.tar.gz
mv remaster-0.1 scripts
cd scripts
./knoppix-remaster /mnt/hda2/remaster
Then I follow the menus and create a new remaster and hit <ENTER> for the default path. It will extract the contents of the CD. When it is done it will ask if you want to chroot into the extracted enviornment.
Now you are in the chroot and on your own.

I hope this helps.
James