I have my Ipod mini working perfectly with my Knoppix 3.9 hd install. I installed gtkpod from the new debian stable release before I did the rest of this.

Here are some of the tweaks I had to do in order to get there, though. First, I got an ieee1394 to ipod adapter because I don't have USB 2.0 on my machine, only usb 1.1. I do have a firewire port. Second, I added hfsplus support to my modules list. In the /etc/modules-2.6.11 file I added hfsplus (My knoppix install was beginner, multi-user hardware detection). I didn't fiddle with fstab, since when knoppix boots, if I have the ipod mini attached, it detects it as /dev/sda. I get three partitions when I do this. /dev/sda3 is the one for data.

Third, As root (and I can only use the Ipod as root, so I guess it isn't perfect ) I mount the Ipod mini with:
# mount -t hfsplus /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3

As root, I run gtkpod. I had to change the preferences there to use the /mnt/sda3 mount point. I created the directory structure on the ipod, and added mp3's.

Other than the trial and error frustrations of finding all this stuff out, I have had no problems since. I have loaded over 800 mp3's, added text files under Notes, deleted songs, made and edited playlists, and edited the song info, perfectly.

Good Luck.