[Discussion] What's that ONE Live Distro on USB/CD you keep for emergency

[my2we9dy]

I keep hearing "use a live distro to login and fix <whatever> issue" but could never figure out what is/are the popular such distros that people keep as emergency/backup/fallback. I am assuming debian live iso won't work as it wouldn't have gparted/clonezilla etc. repair software right? So just curious, what's your go to Live Distro in case of absolute disaster which has all the essential software. Thanks!

[Linuxgaming1824]

the grub boot cd is really good

and the arch rescue cd is really good too

those two plus a fedora/debian xfce live disk

on a single usb with ventoy usb (multi iso's on 1 usb tool)

is the ultimate linux rescue disk right now...(oh and also + pupppy linux 5.9 or w.e)

(although sometimes the iso's behave differently when they are all on one usb and not installed
by themselves with dd, depending on how the systems are loaded and the configuration of the underlying operating system)

I wish there were better options honestly, it's on my list of things to do to make a custom one, but it's hard to replace all of their functionality, for a broken boot sector(grub) the grub boot cd is irreplaceable, and can get you right back into a broken system. For easy chroot and automatic root the arch rescue cd is perfect, and it has some of the tools you want to use anyways for rescue operations in general, for the general systems it takes some manual labor, and puppy linux is the godmode distro if you have to choose just one just get a puppy linux cd, and puppy linux usb the 5.9 one or w.e(fossa pup)

[my2we9dy]

the grub boot cd is really good

What's the link for this. I searched and couldn't find much. Thanks in advance.

[Linuxgaming1824]

- grub boot cd -

https://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/

- arch rescue cd -

https://www.system-rescue.org/

- debian live disk (xfce) -

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... so-hybrid/

- Puppy Linux -

(i think fossa pup is the good one, there's a ton of these they perform differently)

https://forum.puppylinux.com/puppy-linux-collection

- Ventoy multi-iso to usb tool -

https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

(I keep all this stuff on the side for emergencies, it's nice to have different tools to solve problems differently)\

There's actually a ton of different linux projects too that have their own unique utility, there's so much it's hard to explain briefly on the forums... but there's a variety of projects for making your own iso's when you want to make one with extra tools you like on it

[Linuxgaming1824]

There are some important considerations though when using these to get them to work,

the stuff I just linked is so basic that they typically work without issues

but when using live cd's in general there are some things to keep in mind

First: there is a difference between bios and uefi mode for booting iso images,
modern operating systems are starting to phase out bios mode which provides us with unique capabilities that uefi does not. Computers released in the last ten years? I guess? have the capability to boot in bios or uefi mode, and that is determined by the bios/uefi system settings.

If you have both bios and uefi mode enabled in bios settings then when you enter the boot menu at system startup you'll see an option for usb's that looks like this...

USB: Generic Flash Disk
UEFI: Generic Flash Disk

Selecting USB will boot into bios mode, selecting UEFI will boot into UEFI mode

So sometimes linux live cd's will not work with UEFI and we need to use bios mode...

Then sometimes we need to edit the grub command line to pass parameters to the kernel in order to get the system working...the most typical is to use nomodeset if the graphics driver is broken, and that will allow you to get into a basic desktop environment.

Sometimes having multiple iso's on one usb with ventoy for example will prevent them from working with bios mode, or uefi mode, or both, and we have to have them placed on an iso properly with dd in order to get them to work... that looks like this:

sudo dd if=liveCD.iso of=/dev/sda bs=1M oflag=direct status=progress; sync

where /dev/sda is the device or the usb, and the whole entire device /dev/sda not a partition on it like /dev/sda1. if the sync portion at the end isn't added than after shutting down or rebooting the iso image can be corrupted on the usb which can cause a few different issues such as preventing live iso's from properly installing, as well as loading whatsoever,

So even after making a usb with ventoy you are going to want to use the command...

sudo sync

after writing iso images to the usb before rebooting to prevent your file system operations from being corrupted. : D Good luck.

Source: meni meni linux

[pbear]

I keep hearing "use a live distro to login and fix <whatever> issue" but could never figure out what is/are the popular such distros that people keep as emergency/backup/fallback. I am assuming debian live iso won't work as it wouldn't have gparted/clonezilla etc. repair software right? So just curious, what's your go to Live Distro in case of absolute disaster which has all the essential software. Thanks!

My go-to for a live repair environment is LMDE (Mint's Debian edition), in part because it has GParted and various other tools already installed. Bear in mind, though, you can easily install any app you want in a live session, provided it has internet access. That said, my preferred repair environment is a full install flash drive. Mine is pretty elaborate, but even a simple one will be much better than a live ISO.

Clonezilla is a different kettle of fish. The installable version isn't suitable for desktop backup or restore. For that, you always boot from ISO. Of which speaking, I second the suggestion of Ventoy.

[sunrat]

PartedMagic is really good - https://partedmagic.com/
Single download costs $15 though. It doesn't change that much between versions lately so older versions can be functional for a few years.

MX Linux can be used as live + persistence so you can install whatever tools you need on it.

REFInd is great for booting any installation where GRUB isn't working.

I have these 3 on a Ventoy stick.

[Linuxgaming1824]

The last thing you need is actually a copy of your motherboards firmware install files copied onto a fat32 usb...

because obviously our firmware is targeted for hijacking, so for a truly clean reinstall of all your operating system software

you will want to reflash your firmware with it's files from the original manufacturer of your motherboard...(made for your specific motherboard)

so yea you are gonna need more than just 'one' usb and even cd's if you actually want to do rescue operations ; d

[Uptorn]

Linux Mint because of its wide coverage of hardware compatibility (through the inclusion of non-free drivers and firmwares) and inclusion of memtest as well as preinstalled tools, as others have mentioned above.

It is reliable to have handy in case files need to quickly be recovered from some failing device and for other emergency maintenance purposes.

I suppose I will consider using Debian for this role now that non-free firmware is included in installation media (for better or for worse).

But I've really been interested in building a multi-tool USB drive that can boot various distributions as well as stand alone tools. I'm just not sure how I want to go about that yet.

[wizard10000]

I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet but the one I use is SystemRescue.

Here's a list of tools that come installed on the .iso - https://www.system-rescue.org/System-tools/

[panpan]

I think MX Linux is the best option, because except it includes together, GParted, boot repair which works well with MX OS, Time Shift to restore backup, also includes the very useful tool Chroot Rescue Scan, to access any Linux OS via Chroot to repair it.

[my2we9dy]

PartedMagic is really good - https://partedmagic.com/
Single download costs $15 though. It doesn't change that much between versions lately so older versions can be functional for a few years.

MX Linux can be used as live + persistence so you can install whatever tools you need on it.

REFInd is great for booting any installation where GRUB isn't working.

I have these 3 on a Ventoy stick.

Thanks for the other two @sunrat but I am NOT spending $15 for partedmagic

[sunrat]

PartedMagic is really good - https://partedmagic.com/
Single download costs $15 though. It doesn't change that much between versions lately so older versions can be functional for a few years....

Thanks for the other two @sunrat but I am NOT spending $15 for partedmagic

I actually came across this one last night - Dr.Parted
A free open source distro based on Debian Testing with pretty much all the same tools as PartedMagic. Haven't tried it yet but it looks promising. It uses OpenBox so is quite light and the image is only 705MB.

[sickpig]

Ubuntu LTS it always works with all the latest hardware.

[Linuxgaming1824]

Ubuntu LTS it always works with all the latest hardware.

Actually ubuntu was a good rescue cd maybe 15 years ago, and never since.
It's development has made it too slow and unstable to be useful as a live cd or rescue disk.

That's what people on linux are talking about when they say "bloated" or "lightweight"

Now ubuntu is as bloated as windows 11 (which means it's totally broken and unstable right now)

All the lightweight distributions besides ubuntu classify as good rescue distributions precisely because of the fact that they work so easily, and with little resistance to "latest" hardware or even older hardware in fact.

It even takes technical skill to so much as make it run, whereas nearly all of the lightweight alternatives are point and click difficulty. Plug em in, everything works, they just run.