General Observation:

The title
'An alternative to remastering for Knoppix CD-Size LiveUSBs'
seems to offend some of the remastering cognoscenti.

Perhaps a better title might have been
'A minimalist script to transcribe Knoppix cloop customizations'

My focus is on saving my customizations and my style is to work with
adequate, but reasonably minimal resources. Remastering, as purely defined,
would be a poorer alternative to achieve these ends.

The latent capability within Knoppix to use overlaid compressed images
is under-utilized for its worth, in my opinion.


Specifically, in regard to stackimu as presented for download in Post #1:

1. I have downloaded the material posted on Knoppix.net, checked and found that
Stacked.Images (1106) is working as I intended.

2. Knoppix has a built-in (un-explained) minimum 200 Mb value for persistent store.
A recent Synaptic update brought in 287 Mb to /var; this came close to over-running a
350 Mb knoppix-data.img allotment originally in use. I'm now using 500 Mb as my
(default) persistence file size.

3. There may be a surprise at KNOPPIX8, if one hasn't provided enough cloops.
The Knoppix standard is to provide cloop[0-7]. linux cloop.cloop_max=10 (or more) at boot
would provide cloop8 and cloop9. mountknoppix and mountunion in /init might need to be re-
defined as well, beyond KNOPPIX[0-9], to further increase the number of updates beyond 9.
For the time being, my stackimu update limit is set to provide only 7 updates,
in accordance with the KNOPPIX 7 current default definitions.

4. 'View Contents of /KNOPPIX-DATA' is more informative if defined with a replacement
for the $V4 stackimu line which reads:
$V4) TL=$V4; du -m --max-depth=2 --exclude=.wh* $KDF \
| sort -g -r | sed 's_/KNOPPIX-DATA_._' > SF;;
This improved the View of /*DATA Option is to allow assessment of specifically where
additional material is coming from and to serve as a guide in editing of what's stored
by prepare_update.

5. Added 'View Option, df -h device assignments'. Note that KNOPPIX[n] files are reported
in the expanded size in Mbs in df reports, and in condensed size in Mbs in du reports.
Therefor, the size of contents of the /*DATA directory may appear more than twice their
size in df -h than in du -h.

6. Removed Main Option 6 to provide a compacted, off-line, prior-knoppix-data.img as a
belt-and-suspenders back-up option, since it seemed both clumsy and unnecessary
in practice.