Tell me your favourite rescue USB image and why!

Also rescue tips and tricks as that’s always interesting.

I have been using a Debian installer USB as I had it to hand (DVD image IIRC) but if I boot into a shell without mounting another root FS the number of utilities is quite limited (just busybox basics). For example just now I wanted gzip but it only had gunzip…

I feel like a shell started from the installer USB should have access to a lot more utilities because the files are there on the disk!

Does anyone know a way to set up a kind of USB like the debian installer where you can install packages from the installer into the live environment?

  • taipan_snake@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    I’ve just got Arch Linux installed on a USB drive. I set it up so it works with both UEFI and legacy BIOS boot. It works great - I can install whatever tools I need on it, I can even use it as a little portable Linux drive if I need that. I’ve also used it to install Arch on a number of my computers.

    The only issue is that the USB drive is pretty slow, so it’s not the best experience using it

    • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Slower than the kind of shell you get in the Debian installer?

      Is it slower because it’s trying to log and write to the root fs whereas the installer runs everything in RAM and doesn’t write to the USB?

      • taipan_snake@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I think so. There are some optimisations that can be done to improve things, but at the end of the day it’s running off a slow USB drive

    • aureleEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I do the same thing with NixOs, pretty handy but damn slow.