Problems with compressed 64-bits Knoppix: Summing up
While 64-bits HD-install of 6.4.4 seems to run smoothly, either with stock kernel 2.6.37-64 or with custom compiled 2.6.39.2, I have still not been able to get a remastered version to work.
The main problem seem to be that busybox (whichever version I have tried, including custom compiled) does not seem to be able to run programs with "no restrictions" off a loop-mounted image. I can chroot into the image, and run whatever programs from there, but I can't get /sbin/init to run correctly. Typically, there are complaints, e.g. with /dev/io* devices.
First, I worked only with cloop, and that has maybe some problems on it's own with pure 64-bits. I'm not quite sure, for to reduce complexity a little, I switched to squashfs. Which works perfectly with 32-bits remastering, and BTW, is the compression used in Knoppix' relatives Ubuntu and Kanotix live.
To avoid complications as much as possible, I stripped down the init script, carrying out only the bare necessities for mounting of persistent image, compressed (KNOPPIX.sq) and aufs /UNIONFS. That goes perfectly well now, and I don't think I have bypassed any necessary initialization in the simplification. I used busybox for mounting /home, and did some copying or remounting with /dev, /proc and /sys. It seems to give me a runnable system, but /sbin/init just crashes.
As similar 32-bits versions of busybox work perfectly, I think it must have something to do with 64-bits busybox and the union mounting. It should not be very much, as I can chroot into /UNIONFS and execute programs.
I have compared initrd initialization in Knoppix, Debian and Kanotix, and the two others hold a much larger set of statically compiled programs in the bin folder: Knoppix 6.4.4 only has busybox and ntfs-3g. I have tried to substitute minirt bin content from those versions, but so far without success. Something I _could_ do, is to wrap the Knoppix squashfs image in a modified Kanotix init-cover. But I really don't think it is worth it.
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