[nameequalsmain]

I've used Finnix[1] for recovery tasks in the past. Having a good Linux distro on a USB stick makes me feel ready for any (most often self inflicted) computer emergency. It's the sysadmin equivalent of a Swiss army knife.

[1] https://www.finnix.org/

[basemi]

Another one is SystemRescueCD[0]

I've used it extensively while preparing servers for production with the autorun feature[1]

[0] https://www.system-rescue.org/

[1] https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Run_your_own_scripts_wi...

[c0npr]

I combined several more live cd (such as gparted, clonezilla, memtest, ubuntu installer) in one usb stick thru the use of YUMI-UEFI. Very handy for troubleshooting esp when you are offline.

ref: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

[paol]

I use Ventoy[0] for this purpose (multi boot drives). With it you only have to format the drive once. Ten you just copy .iso images to the drive as files and they become available to boot from. It's great.

[0] https://www.ventoy.net/

[cricalix]

Nice software. Pity the hosting is so slow (I remember 2400 baud, and it's not that slow, but in the modern world it's slow); wonder if the author accepts donations to make it faster.

That said, the SystemRescue download from sourceforge was slower.. ended up finding a torrent and checking the SHA.

[bradwood]

Seconded. It just works.

[sandreas]

Thanks for this, I will add this to my collection :-) I use multiple recovery distributions with Ventoy, see also:

https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/the-ultimate-boot-stick/

[hdjjhhvvhga]

Unrelated: I love how the website of the creator of Finnix blends elements of various epochs of the Web:

https://www.velociraptors.info/vad/

[yonrg]

I share the same feeling. Using sysresccd [1] for it. One anecdote I remember from around 2010; sysresccd starts mdadm, scans all block devices and tries to automatically start md devices. This behaviour shocked me while booting a passive storage server which was connected to a JBOD enclosure. The active server already had the devices started and mounted (was lustre at that time). I was lucky, no data was corrupted ... pfew

Anyways, do you also know about systesccd and could you share differenced between those?

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

[netizen-936824]

Same here, I feel unsafe if I don't have my USB toolkit with me. Long time user of UBCD and a custom Ubuntu images with some block recovery utilities. Shit has saved my ass so many times