SystemRescueCD

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SystemRescueCd is a linux system on a bootable cdrom for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk.

It contains a lot of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic ones (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use: just boot from the cdrom, and you can do everything. The kernel of the system supports most important file systems (ext2/ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), and network ones (samba and nfs).

U Parted creates, resizes, moves, copies partitions, and filesystems (and more).
GParted GUI implementation using the GNU Parted library.
Partimage saves / restores partitions to an image file on another partition or to another system.
File systems tools (e2fsprogs, reiserfsprogs, reiser4progs, xfsprogs, jfsutils, ntfsprogs, dosfstools): format, resize, and debug an existing partition of a hard disk
Ntfs3g: enables read/write access to MS Windows NTFS partitions.
sfdisk saves / restores partition table (and more).
Test-disk tool to check and undelete partition, supports reiserfs, ntfs, fat32, ext2/3 and many others
Network tools (Samba, NFS, ping, nslookup, ...)

SystemRescueCD is based on Gentoo and contains a stripped-down set of applications for system rescues. Needs Linux knowledge to operate. So it doesn't include OpenOffice or the Gimp or all of the other productivity applications that Knoppix has. You can get ISOs for x86, Sparc, and PowerPC. The x86 version is a mere 155 MB. Gui typically does not work (Xorg is installed).

Even better: You can boot and run SystemRescue from a USB stick. Newer systems support booting from USB devices; usually you need to go into the system BIOS to turn this on. It's not completely reliable, however; some systems seem to be allergic to booting from USB devices, so be sure to test it before you need it.

With SystemRescue you can copy files over the network, do serious network troubleshooting, read and write all the major filesystems including NTFS, manage partitions and filesystems, and do secure deletions. SystemRescue comes with my favorite data recovery tool, GNU ddrescue. This is the best utility for grabbing data off a failing hard drive. It is fast for a dd-based command, and smart enough to skip over bad blocks and keep going, looking for good blocks to copy.

The most surefire method I know requires a second local hard drive of equal or greater size; either SATA/PATA or USB. Then boot up SystemRescue and copy the first drive to the second drive. Of course you must replace the drive names in the example with your own drive names:

# ddrescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb

You may copy partitions instead of whole drives. Then run fsck on the second drive to check for and fix errors. Make sure it is not mounted, then run this command:

# fsck /dev/sdb

Add the -a option to tell fsck to automatically fix all errors. Use fsck only on Linux filesystems. For other filesystems you'll need their own native filesystem-consistency-fixing utilities.

Don't confuse GNU ddrescue with dd-rescue. They do the same thing and both do it well, but I think ddrescue is faster and more reliable.

GParted is the best partitioning and filesystem-creation application there is. Put it on a bootable medium and you can manage most Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, or Windows partitions and filesystems. Add the dd-based Clonezilla for cloning, and you have the ultimate power tool for new installations, restores, and replications. Clonezilla is an intelligent partition or disk-cloning program that works on any filesystem, because it operates at the block level. On supported filesystems (which are pretty much the same batch as GParted) it copies only used sectors. On unsupported filesystems it can't tell which ones are used, so it does a block-by-block copy. Either way you get your clones.

Download the torrent from TuxDistro. (The other download sites don't seem to exist.) Visit GParted LiveCD for instructions on creating a bootable USB stick. This uses the same download.

Our Excellent Ancestors: Tomsrtbt and SuperRescueCD

Tomsrtbt, "the most GNU/Linux on one floppy disk" was the first bootable live Linux on removable media. After all these years it is still useful. True, most computers these days don't even bother with a floppy drive, but for machines that still have them it's a great rescue diskette. It needs only 8 megabytes of RAM. It comes with everything you need for networking and copying files over the network, which is probably the #1 job for a rescue device. It has filesystem utilities, including Windows filesystems, and basic networking troubleshooting commands, so you can perform a surprising number of tasks from this tiny ancestor of bootable live Linuxes. Tomsrtbt has saved the day for me more times than I can remember.

H. Peter Anvin's SuperRescue CD was the first live Linux CD. Mr. Anvin is a bootloader guru, as well as a significant inventor or contributor in a number of projects. Super Rescue CD is based on Red Hat 7.2, so it's of limited usefulness on modern systems. But it's a nice tool for older systems; it only needs 24 megabytes of RAM and it handles older hardware without hassles. If you want X Windows, just type startx at the prompt and you get KDE. It's a funny-looking older KDE, but still the real deal.

SuperRescue CD pioneered on-the-fly compression/decompression, which is how you stuff 1.7 gigabytes of operating system and applications onto a single CD.

Fixing Horked MBRs

When you're multi-booting or installing a new operating system onto a used system, sometimes the MBR (Master Boot Record) gets all messed up, so you need to wipe it out and start over. You can do this with the dd command. Be sure to use your own drive name for the of= value:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

That preserves the partition table. If you also want to zero out the partition table, do this:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Notes:

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Some amount of grammar and spelling errors should be expected.
The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree... Please try to use Google, Open directory, etc. to find a replacement link (see HOWTO search the WEB for details). We would appreciate if you can mail us a correct link.

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Old news ;-)

SystemRescueCd 1.1.0 Packed with New Utilities - Features advanced customization and the backing-store filesystem - Softpedia

,,,SystemRescueCd is based on Gentoo and, now, with this version, you can add the packages of your choice using Gentoo's package manager. This is present here by including development tools (like gcc, automake, autoconf, etc.) and specific Gentoo-Linux applications (such as emerge, autoconf, etc.) required in order to install new packages, as all that is installed on Gentoo must be compiled.

SystemRescueCd includes 4 kernels, 2 standard ones (rescuecd and rescue 64) and 2 alternative ones (altker32 and altker64). Now, you have the possibility to compile which kernel you want, to best fit your needs. This is usually performed if you'd like more recent sources or you need another driver, or you simply need various compilation options.

Another clever utility we find in this version is the backstore, primarily used to keep the changes after a reboot. A backing-store is a loopback filesystem containing all the changed files of a system. Every minor file change like a file edit, creation or deletion, is recorded on the backing-store, so you just have to load the appropriate one to return to the state you want.

Now, let's have a look at a list with some of the highlights of SystemRescueCd 1.1.0:

· The two kernel sources, standard and alternative, have been swapped;
· The majority of drivers are compiled as module in the standard kernels (2.6.25.16);
· The majority of drivers are built-in the alternative kernels (2.6.25.14);
· The necessary development tools (gcc, make, ...) and Gentoo tools (emerge, equery, ...) have been added;
· The nameif option has been added, which can be used to specify the name of each ethernet interface using the mac address (ex: "nameif=eth0!00:0C:29:57:D0:6E,eth1 00:0C:29:57:D0:64");
· Support for backing-store loopback file systems has been introduced;
· Added support for the speakup (support devices for blind people).

You can find more information regarding the new features and updates by visiting the official changelog.

Main Page - SystemRescueCd

New features introduced in SystemRescueCd-1.1.0

advanced customization: You can now install new packages to SystemRescueCd by doing an advanced customization.

kernel recompilation: There is a new documentation about building a customized SystemRescueCd with your own kernel

backstore: It allows you to keep your changes when you reboot sysresccd

nameif: It allows you to specify the name of each ethernet interface using the mac address.

rsync tutorial: Here is a new documentation about how to use rsync

Features introduced in SystemRescueCd-1.0.x

You can now install new packages to SystemRescueCd by doing an advanced customization.

New option root=auto to boot the first linux system found on the hard-disk

SystemRescueCd has been ported to unicode (utf8)

Use SystemRescueCd remotely with VNC-server

New boot options for advanced ethernet configuration

How to use Xvesa when Xorg fails to start, so that you can always get the graphical environment to work.

New chapter in the handbook that explains How to manage remote servers using SystemRescueCd

The GPT disklabel is the new generation partition table that supports large disks (over 2TB) and more than four partitions.

The autorun feature has been rewritten. It supports more options and scripts can be downloaded from an http web server.

Network booting via PXE can download the sysrcd.dat filesystem through TFTP as well as HTTP

SystemRescueCd-1.0.1 is now based on unionfs and it comes with JWM as the default windows mananager.

SystemRescueCd View topic - Linux disk editor

Hello.

Firstly, thank you for your efforts in creating such a useful collection in a package that works so well. I love it and think it's a great system rescue tool.

Will you please consider including the Linux Disk Editor (http://lde.sourceforge.net/) in the next release of SystemRescue CD. I use it for recovering 'lost' partitions that parted won't even look at (yes I use 1.6.6 from your 0.2.8 CD). I use the statically linked lde-i386, as downloaded directly from SourceForge, and run it from a floppy after booting from your SystemRescue CD.

Incidentally, to really mess up a disk's partitions, just create them with parted, then load Partition Magic and let it 'fix' the 'misalignment' errors it finds, then watch as neither Partition Magic, nor parted will look at the disk again. It doesn't always happen, but sometimes yes. One way to avoid this is if only one person with one set of tools works on a system. Not always possible unfortunately.

To fix this, I use gpart to give me a list of 'possible' partition locations, use linux disk editor to view the contents of the partition tables, and a calculator to determine the 'actual' table locations, then linux disk editor again to edit the tables so they work. Tedious, but such a relief (especially for the owner) when it all works again.
I used to boot a DOS floppy and use Norton Disk Editor, but I much prefer to stay within Linux and use Linux tools.

Thank you for your consideration.
Andrew