I had posted this to answer a specific need. A minimalist chroot, capable of a few commands that needed to have a root filesystem to extract some files to, without overwriting what is already there in the real root... The original post really belongs here in tips and tricks, but it was in answer to another post there.

Ok, I have wrestled with this one for a few days. I tried stuff trying to avoid setting up a chroot.
Now that I have given in and set up the chroot... I can extract the minirt from the cpio archive to my changed "root."

Then I just timestamped a file with touch... and tried to rearchive it. Bingo! It was the exact same size.

So I am going to leave the steps I did in a semi script... well these are the commands I just 'did' from a konsole.
(I can just come back here and copy when I need it.)

Assuming you've booted up to the knoppix user and have a konsole opened to the /home/knoppix/Desktop directory....

I am putting together the files I needed to get a minimal chroot working... using knoppix 5.1.1
A specific chroot just capable of using cpio, and find, ls and a few others. A small one. I had never done it before.
I may want to again though.

If you want to use other commands than this minimal chroot... you will be good to try out the ldd command.
For example... I decided I wanted to be able to use ls. I copied ls to my new-root/bin directory. Then I did a:
ldd /bin/ls
It outputs:

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/librt.so.1 (0xb7efc000)
libacl.so.1 => /lib/libacl.so.1 (0xb7ef6000)
libselinux.so.1 => /lib/libselinux.so.1 (0xb7ee1000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb7daf000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7d9d000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f2e000)
libattr.so.1 => /lib/libattr.so.1 (0xb7d98000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb7d94000)
libsepol.so.1 => /lib/libsepol.so.1 (0xb7d53000)
So I grabbed those libraries from /lib and /lib/tls (I think I just grabbed the whole /lib/tls/*)
and put them in new-root/lib, aka /home/knoppix/Desktop/work/lib.
Simple enough. Well, almost. Ignore the linux-gate.so.1. It doesn't exist. It's a virtual library.

Then a
chroot /home/knoppix/Desktop/work
and I get a
bash-3.1# prompt.

Ok so in another root console I copy my unzipped "minirt" to the new-root as minirt_53de.

Then back in the new-root I execute...
cpio -i --list -I ./minirt_53de > minirt.lst
cpio -imd --format=newc -I ./minirt_53de
touch linuxrc
cpio -o --format=newc < minirt.lst > minirt_53de2
Same size... same blocks count. Bingo.
Any files you add to the minirt, just make sure to add them to the minirt.lst file...
and that way you won't add all the libs and binaries to the minirt when you rearchive.

Cheers

su
mkdir -p work/bin
DEST=`realpath ./work/bin`
SOURCE=/bin

for i in bash cp cpio login ls mkdir more mv rm rmdir sed sh touch; do cp $SOURCE/$i $DEST; done;

mkdir -p work/usr/bin
DEST=`realpath ./work/usr/bin`
SOURCE=/usr/bin
for i in find ldd strace ; do cp $SOURCE/$i $DEST; done;

mkdir -p work/lib/tls
DEST=`realpath ./work/lib/tls`
SOURCE=/lib/tls
for i in libBrokenLocale-2.3.6.so \
libBrokenLocale.so.1 \
libSegFault.so \
libanl-2.3.6.so \
libanl.so.1 \
libc-2.3.6.so \
libc.so.6 \
libcidn-2.3.6.so \
libcidn.so.1 \
libcrypt-2.3.6.so \
libcrypt.so.1 \
libdl-2.3.6.so \
libdl.so.2 \
libm-2.3.6.so \
libm.so.6 \
libmemusage.so \
libnsl-2.3.6.so \
libnsl.so.1 \
libnss_compat-2.3.6.so \
libnss_compat.so.2 \
libnss_dns-2.3.6.so \
libnss_dns.so.2 \
libnss_files-2.3.6.so \
libnss_files.so.2 \
libnss_hesiod-2.3.6.so \
libnss_hesiod.so.2 \
libnss_nis-2.3.6.so \
libnss_nis.so.2 \
libnss_nisplus-2.3.6.so \
libnss_nisplus.so.2 \
libpcprofile.so \
libpthread-2.3.6.so \
libpthread.so.0 \
libresolv-2.3.6.so \
libresolv.so.2 \
librt-2.3.6.so \
librt.so.1 \
libthread_db-1.0.so \
libthread_db.so.1 \
libutil-2.3.6.so \
libutil.so.1 ; do cp $SOURCE/$i $DEST; done;


DEST=`realpath ./work/lib`
SOURCE=/lib

for i in ld-2.3.6.so \
ld-linux.so.2 \
libacl.a \
libacl.la \
libacl.so \
libacl.so.1 \
libacl.so.1.1.0 \
libattr.a \
libattr.la \
libattr.so \
libattr.so.1 \
libattr.so.1.1.0 \
libc-2.3.6.so \
libc.so.6 \
libncurses.so.5 \
libncurses.so.5.5 \
libncursesw.so.5 \
libncursesw.so.5.5 \
libselinux.so.1 \
libsepol.so.1 ; do cp $SOURCE/$i $DEST; done;