Quote Originally Posted by ruymbeke
Since I did not get an answer on the debian mailing list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-knopp.../msg00013.html
I will try again in here:
In order to customize your minirt and some features like: iso boot from ntfs, customized hostname,...
I found out this problem: how do you extract the content of the Knoppix 5.3.0 minirt.gz ?
Usually "gunzip initrd.gz" and "cpio -imvd -I ../initrd" does the job but not this time:
Each files of the minirt cpio archive file contains a leading "/" which makes the data of the minirt cpio archive
to be stored in the "root" instead of the current directory, overriding the system files of the running system.
I cannot find any cpio option to override the leading "/".
Please help...
Thank you and Best Regards,
Gilles
First of all, thanks for pointing out that the linuxtracker torrent provides an incomplete copy of the CeBIT image. I suspected as much!

You probably already have a workaround for the Knoppix customization, but I'll post some stream-of-consciousness ideas just in case.
1) Hack the cpio file directories with sed or hexedit.
2) Use chroot to provide a safe root.
3) Use unionfs or aufs to provide a safe root.
4) Use pax to convert to and from tar.
5) Use pax directly.