SystemRescue 13.00 released [LWN.net]

SystemRescue 13.00 has been released. The SystemRescue distribution is a live boot system-rescue toolkit, based on Arch Linux, for repairing systems in the event of a crash. This release includes the 6.18.20 LTS kernel, updates bcachefs tools and kernel module to 1.37.3, and many upgraded packages. See the step-by-step guide for instructions on performing common operations such as recovering files, creating disk clones, and resetting lost passwords.

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Awesome tool!!

Posted Mar 30, 2026 19:07 UTC (Mon) by brian_lindholm (subscriber, #42351) [Link]

I've been using SystemRescue since the early SystemRescueCD days, and I've found it to be an extraordinarily useful tool. I've used it for data recovery on failed Windows systems, for transferring systems from HDD to SSD, for querying hardware and wiping drives on older systems that people want to refurbish, for testing memory with MemTest86+, for full-system backups to external HDs, and more. I've probably booted into it several hundred times over the years, and I'm really appreciative of all the work that François Dupoux has done to keep it going.

A basic tool in all my computers

Posted Apr 1, 2026 8:24 UTC (Wed) by berto (subscriber, #58604) [Link] (1 responses)

One of the nicest things about SystemRescue is that you can easily boot it from your own hard drive without having to carry an external USB drive.

This is very practical for maintenance tasks on your own computer. You can simply put the SystemRescue ISO image in /boot, and GRUB will read the kernel and the initrd directly from the image itself. When the system boots, the ISO image will be detected automatically and copied to RAM, leaving you with a full-fledged rescue OS that runs entirely from memory.

The GRUB entry looks like this:

menuentry 'System Rescue 12.03' {
    insmod part_gpt
    insmod ext2
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root bd207c24-2da2-11f1-81dd-8811c533d013
    loopback loop /systemrescue-12.03-amd64.iso
    set root=loop
    linux /sysresccd/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz archisobasedir=sysresccd img_dev=/dev/disk/by-uuid/bd207c24-2da2-11f1-81dd-8811c533d013 img_loop=/systemrescue-12.03-amd64.iso setkmap=es copytoram
    initrd /sysresccd/boot/amd_ucode.img /sysresccd/boot/x86_64/sysresccd.img
    boot
}

A basic tool in all my computers

Posted Apr 3, 2026 19:29 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

This sounds like something to contribute to the upstream docs :) .