SystemRescue (Previously known as "SystemRescueCD") is a Linux distribution for x86-64 and IA-32 computers. The primary purpose of SystemRescue is to repair unbootable or otherwise damaged computer systems after a system crash. SystemRescue is not intended to be used as a permanent operating system. It runs from a Live CD, a USB flash drive or any type of hard drive. It was designed by a team led by François Dupoux, and is based on Arch Linux since version 6.0. Starting with version 6.0, it has systemd as its init system.
Requirements
For more recent versions, a 64-bit processor is required, with 32-bit processor support being discontinued with version 9.0.3 in 2022. PowerPC had a single release with version 0.2.0 in 2004, with SPARC also having one for version 0.4.0 in 2007.
If a PXE boot requires HTTP or TFTP, at least 1GB of memory will be needed for loading a required file for those into memory. However if NFS or NBD is used, the 1GB requirement isn't necessary. Running the live cd from memory is recommended for speed and not requiring the boot device to be connected after boot, however it does require installed memory to be at least 2GB.
There are two bootloaders supporting the OS: GRUB and SYSLINUX.
SystemRescue features include:
System tools
- Cryptsetup – software to encrypt and decrypt disks, supports the LUKS format.
Applications
- Anti-virus – ClamAV.
- Archives – Tar and p7zip (both provide support for gzip, xz, zstd, lz4, bzip2 formats), FSArchiver (compressed archives from file system content)
See also
- Parted Magic
- List of bootable data recovery software