Re: packages?
The octave stuff on the CD includes things that I have written that are in some Octave Forge packages, but I put the stuff on directly, rather than installing o-f packages. The included stuff is bfgsmin, samin, and the econometrics stuff (mle, gmm, kernel, etc.). Otherwise, there are no other o-f packages. As noted, it is (relatively) easy to add stuff like this by making a custom image.