ALT Linux Rescue For Linux

ALT Linux Rescue is an open source distribution of Linux based on the Mandrake operating system and specifically engineered to provide system administrators with a perfectly crafted tool for repairing and rescuing broken systems.

It is distributed as two Live CD ISO images that can be deployed to USB thumb drives using the UNetbootin application or written to blank CD discs with any CD/DVD burning software. Both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are supported.

There is no graphical environment on this ALT Linux flavor, which has been designed to be used directly from the Live media. There’s no installation, but the boot medium is persistent, which means that it will allow users to save some settings and configuration files on the USB flash drive.

The boot menu offers the ability to boot from the first or second hard/solid disk drive, view detailed information about the hardware components of the respective computer, as well as to run a memory test.

With ALT Linux Rescue, you will be able to perform hardware diagnostics, resize partitions, fix bootloaders, filesystems and partitions, as well as to recover files or entire partitions deleted by human error or a faulty software.

In addition it can be used to backup and restore files to network servers, optimize file system usage, diagnose remote services and network issues, as well as to wipe partitions or entire disk drives.

Among the included rescue/recovery tools, we can mention Refind, Smartmontools, TestDisk, PhotoRec, Bonnie++, chntpw, ddrescue, cpuburn, exfat-utils, hdparm, gpart, parted, ipmitool, memtest86+, lft, netcat, scalpel, rsync, uudeview, wipefreespace, and whdd.

All the aforementioned utilities are known to dedicated system administrators, those who always have a few rescue CD disc or USB thumb drives around them at all times. The ALT Linux Rescue operating system is no different from the standard rescue CD of other Linux distributions.