Version: 9.0.0 - Released: 2021/12/30 - Take a look at the Changelog
For other releases please take a look at our Release Page.
BG-Rescue Linux is a very small Linux distribution (download-size < 20MB) which is intended mainly for rescue purposes.
The system runs entirely in ram and can be booted either from usb-stick or cdrom. It can be booted either on BIOS or UEFI hardware. Besides i386 it also includes a 64bit Linux kernel generating the possibility to chroot into a 64bit (amd64) userspace environment. The system can serve as a full rescue / backup / restore system for Linux or Windows based computers or to facilitate the installation of a recent Debian oder Ubuntu Linux via debootstrap.
All the relevant major filesystems and many network cards are supported as well as mounting samba (cifs) and nfs shares over network. A wide range of disk- and filesystem utilities as well as strong compression tools are integrated, including a 64bit version of lrzip. Encrypted disks including LUKS are supported and there is limited BitLocker support. A graphical frontend (ytree) is also included.
BG-Rescue Linux can also be used as an initramfs (initrd) image to boot virtually any amd64/i386 Linux system. This feature can be useful in case of a failing boot loader. BG-Rescue Linux can serve its kernel and initramfs to prepare and mount the system's root partition and finally to run init/systemd.
Requirements
You need at least a 586 machine (BIOS or UEFI) with 64 mb ram to run BG-Rescue Linux.
If running a 64bit (amd64) system booting a 64bit SMP kernel is supported.
To use the optional VESA graphic modes You need a VESA 2.0 compilant VGA card.
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Contents
The system is a BusyBox and musl libc based rescue system with Linux kernel 5.15.
The user can choose between 32 different (including swiss) keyboard layouts.
If an executable script "bgrescue.rc" or "bgrescue/bgrescue.rc" on the usb-stick or cdrom exists it is executed at bootup.
If using the 64bit kernel an optimized 64bit version of lrzip is available.
USB-stick images will expand to the full size of the usb-stick on the first usage.
The system includes debootstrap with a custom script to facilitate the installation of a recent Debian/Linux.
Customisation using boot parameters is possible, please see: boot_parameters.txt
Customisation is also possible with the configuration file bgrescue.cfg or bgrescue/bgrescue.cfg
Encrypted disks including LUKS are supported and there is limited BitLocker support.
Supported Hardware:
Included Software:
Supported Filesystems: btrfs, exfat, ext4 (with ext2 / ext3), hfs, hfs+, iso9660, minix, ntfs3 (ntfs), ntfs-3g, reiserfs, tmpfs, udf, vfat (msdos), xfs
Network filesystems: cifs (samba / smbfs), nfs
| File | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| BG-Rescue Linux images: | ||
| bgrescue-9.0.0.iso.xz | 18M | BG-Rescue Linux bootable image for USB-Stick or CDROM |
| bgrescue-9.0.0.iso.zip | 35M | BG-Rescue Linux bootable image for USB-Stick or CDROM |
| Additional downloads: | ||
| bgrescue-9.0.0-src.zip | 35M | BG-Rescue Linux Source-Archive (Customisation / Sources) |
| 7-Zip | File archiver with a high compression ratio (Windows) | |
| The Unarchiver | Graphical archive extraction program (macOS) | |
| Win32 Disk Imager | Tool for writing images to USB sticks or SD/CF cards (Windows) | |
| sha1sums.txt | SHA-1 hashes to verify download-integrity |
Download problems: "RIGHTCLICK" and "Save link as..."
Alternate download location: https://sourceforge.net/projects/bgrescuelinux/files/
For direct linking (of the current version) please use:
The kernel configuration file is named vmlinuz.64.config or vmlinuz.32.config respectively
and can be found in the bgrescue-9.0.0-src.zip along all other BG-Rescue Linux related files.
The program You are searching is netcat. It can be used to send almost
anything directly over the network. To use it, You have first to configure
Your network devices on both systems correctly. Then type:
sender: nc [IP of reciever] [port] < [input-file]
reciever: nc -lp [port] > [output-file]
An expample for copying a harddrive would be:
sender: dd if=/dev/hdX | gzip | nc 10.0.0.100 32767
reciever: nc -lp 32767 | gunzip | dd of=/dev/hdX
BG-Rescue Linux is compiled using a build-system built with buildroot and musl libc
with several custom config files. In bgrescue-9.0.0-src.zip you will find the patches.
Another excellent mini distribution is maintained by Christian Perle - Hal91.
The ONE-DISK-LINUX of the ONE-DISK-LINUXes is maintained by Tom Oehser - tomsrtbt.
A really interesting article: How Linux Saved My Files and My Job - PDF-Version.
Please visit also our page at Sourceforge - BG-Rescue Linux.
Please visit also our page at Freecode - BG-Rescue Linux (stalled).