YMMV but I found installing refind as a UEFI boot manager made life a lot easier for me, and I've now got rid of grub (it can also boot grub tho which can be easier as a transition).

It automatically offers a boot menu of choice between each bootable "OS" folder it finds under the EFI folder, and within each one it'll boot the latest or show me a menu of kernels to boot... all this without the need to generate a new config file each time (ie it finds kernels etc at runtime).

You can add menu entries via refind.conf but I don't find I need to....

The UEFI boot process and structure is quite straight-forward but can be hard to understand ("too much reference documentation, not enough tutorial" for me) but you may be able to use refind to boot your existing grub configuration without resetting everything.

Booting from a live USB distro (I have an old copy of PartedMagic I keep for this, SystemRescueCD is also an option) should let you see what drive you have... GPT or MBR etc and to inspect the partitions

Get used to backing up your data, so you don't lose it due to hardware failure. But I used to have several OSes installed to the same hard drive and use one /home partition for all of them a long time ago. This is a very bad idea (sharing dot files across several operating systems at the same time) nowadays though.

If you are able to shrink your current OS'es / filesystem with a new OS installer, or something like https://www.system-rescue.org/ to make room for the new OS, there is nothing stopping you from brute-force converting the Ubuntu partition into a /home partition. But I'm not going to explain how to do that because I would expect massive problems for any user account brought over this way due to problems with dot file conflicts with existing directories.

A much better idea would be to shrink the Ubuntu filesystem as above, then after you install your new OS, mount the old Ubuntu filesystem somewhere like /mnt, then run

• cp -r /mnt/home/youroldusername ~/old
• If your UID is different between the previous and current OS installation, you would then need to: chown -R yourNewUid ~/old

But either way. Back. Up. Your. Data. Everyone who has not done this has come to regret it eventually.

Du könntest SystemrescueCD booten und dort Shred verwenden (das Tool gibt's glaube ich auch auf vielen anderen Live-Disks). Hier ist das etwas erklärt und mit Beispielen ganz unten: https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Secure_Deletion_of_Data/ Musst halt Shred sagen, wie oft er random Daten schreiben und am Ende Nullen soll.

Wenn du Fragen hast, immer her damit 😁

The number of times I've booted a system over the years with System Rescue CD and mounted/chrooted in to fix stuff is... far too many.

Hell, sometimes I do this to VMs!

1. You don't need to use the official iso image, you can use any other one with a graphical DE/WM and use multiples terminals and the browser. I personally like SystemRescueCD.
2. Put MAKEOPTS="-jN -lN" and EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs=N --load-average=N" in your Make.conf. You can get N with nproc. With that you will compile things fast.
3. Focus on the flags that are related with things you don't want, and leave the search for flags you want latter on.
4. Don't waste time configuring your kernel during the Gentoo installation, use the binary one, and latter, with a DE/WM you do that, and keep the binary version for fail-back.
5. lsmod > config.txt && LSMOD=config.txt make localmodconfig help a lot cleaning up the kernel config.

A positive. There are many specialist distributions created for specific purposes which just wouldn't exist if there were only one or two distributions to choose from.

To give some examples:

• My router runs OpenWrt
• I pxe boot SystemRescue to provide a recovery environment for machines on my network.

Step #1: back up /etc, /usr/local/etc, maybe /opt.

mdadm configuration is stored at the start/end of member partitions. Depending on your install media, you should be able to load a rescue system from Ubuntu Install ISO, or get a Live CD and mount drives for further investigation (any Linux).

Another option would be to select manual formatting during install, mount existing partitions. However, this brings up a different issue: you need nuke existing OS for a clean install, and you might not be able to re-format partitions.

Personally I would try with SystemRescueCD following this Debian wiki article.

> Some resources say that I'm supposed to unlock the partition, expand it from GPARTED or any other tool of the sor

NO. A big no.

Just do a good or even 2 backups of your /home

Instead of gparted download https://www.system-rescue.org/ CD/ISO on a USB. Boot it. It loads XFCE gui. Then open gparted inside it.

Delete sda5

Expand the unallocated. and format it as XFS or whatever. Does not matter. You just need some sdaX

Follow a typical luks /home

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdaX

continue the typical commands.

Edit your /etc/fstab to point to new partition.

mount /home

Restore data using

rsync -a /yourbackup/home /home

(PS: Never ever expand ext4 to reverse side).

> Now I'm not sure what is a good "recovery" live CD.

If your recovery doesn't include reinstalling I recommend systemrescuecd. It's got all the tools you'd need to fix a broken installation.

Good luck!

That's OK. You will need another storage medium to back it up to. Usually this means booting up a Linux USB (I like SystemRescueCD) and then moving your files somewhere else, such as another hard drive/SSD or a USB drive.

SystemRescue - a bootable Linux usb with lots of tools that can deal with this stuff. It has gparted for the partition management, and clonezilla, partclone, and fsarchiver

I use SystemRescue to launch GPartEd. That is a Linux partition editor. It can copy, move, and resize partitions among other things.

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

It helps if you are at least somewhat familiar with Linux. Other tools may be more user-friendly, but this thing can do a lot and is 100% free.

So with both RAM sticks in, your BIOS/UEFI shows 16GB, but Windows 10 only shows 8GB.

​

You can try a LiveUSB like https://www.system-rescue.org/Installing-SystemRescue-on-a-USB-memory-stick/ to see if it shows 16GB RAM. SystemRescue also includes Memtest86+ that you can use to test the RAM.

I have selected the default option as in the first screenshoot in here https://www.system-rescue.org/Screenshots/ , then I used the graphical interface and GParted detected /dev/sdb1 with 1Tb which is my HDD (which I use for extra storage) but it is not detecting my 128 Gb SSD which is where the Debian install was made. The other partition it detects is /dev/sdb2 with 20Gib labeled BIOS_RVI which I assume is systemrescuedcd. How can I proceed from here? I have never used a system recovery software. Thanks for your help!

Agree with using linux dd. You can boot your computer with system rescue cd. https://www.system-rescue.org/

With that, you can run "fdisk -l" to see which sd card is which. Knowing which one is which, you can use dd to clone the cards like this:

dd if=<source card> of=<target card> bs=4M status=progress

Your command might look like:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd bs=4M status=progress

Hope this helps!

Beh visto che conosci Windows prova con la versione di Windows di Photorec (https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) se non va puoi scaricare https://www.system-rescue.org/Download/ e flasharla su una chiavetta (Windows mi pare usi utility tipo Rufus) e avviare da chiavetta.

In ambo i casi ti serve un disco sicuramente buono con abbastanza spazio per gli eventuali files recuperati. L'uso in se di photorec è abbastanza banale (segui un wizard da terminale/curses) sappi che usi le frecce della tastiera, non il mouse per muoverti.

Even then, I would recommend participating in an existing project and publishing an official "lean" version, for example.

Some time ago I created a live distribution based on Arch that was intended as a rescue distribution (similar to SystemRescue). After a few months, the effort to maintain it myself was too high. Especially since, surprisingly, I also received feature requests.

I can certainly understand someone wanting to start their own project. But often they only exist for a few months and are then discontinued. Therefore, it would make more sense if, generally speaking, one or the other would put their ego aside and participate in an already existing project. Even if it means that not every idea will be implemented.

In my opinion, OSS is both a curse and a blessing in this respect. Everyone can do what they think is right. But in many cases it leads to the fact that there is no project that is really usable and that is also supported for a long time.

For example, I use Isso as my commenting system for my websites. The development has sort of fallen asleep for some time now. There are alternatives, but from my point of view they also have disadvantages. Some of them are not developed further even though there are issues (some of which also concern security).

Therefore, from my personal point of view, it would be better if we concentrated on a few solutions instead of trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

https://www.system-rescue.org/ - with this you can install Arch and Gentoo, recover (local) Windows passwords and rather more.

I once dug out an old Dell "server", slapped in the discs from a broken QNAP NAS, booted it with this and had the data flying to another share within 15 mins.

If Windows has lost the will to live, this is handy to get the data off to somewhere else.

Maybe use "System Rescue" booted from a USB drive.. and use shred or wipe commands as explained there :
https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Secure_Deletion_of_Data/
Just an idea...

I think it was System Rescue but it’s been a minute. I’m pretty sure any Linux Rescue ISO on Distro Watch would probably work. Most of them have OpenVM tools installed so they’ll recognize the NIC, and I think some will even mount the drives automatically in R/O. Best of luck!!

I would suggest trying to format it using a live Linux CD (or USB Drive). I'm not a Linux person but some of the distros are built for fixing problems. System Rescue has several partitioning tools

Again, I'm not a linux guy, but I have occasionally used live cds to fix problems I've had. Hopefully, someone who is a Linux guy can make a better suggestion or someone else has a better idea. Good luck!

This one gets my vote, but it has the drawback that it's not automated.

Oh, and I use ddrescue after booting SystemRescue OS in place of Clonezilla.

Cheers!

john

unless the ISO/img has specific parameters to boot to RAM, only some essential stuff will be loaded into RAM. For example, https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Booting_SystemRescueCd/ has a parameter

copytoram

not all liveOS have them...

Was the VM running on the same physical PC that you're having this problem with?

If so, most likely that read-only attribute on the host machine is being fed into the VM.

If the "old pc" is a different machine, then at least it is consistent.

Unless this is a "big" USB drive, it might be safer to toss it in the e-waste bin and call it a day. Even if it is big (and therefore expensive, I don't know how much I would still trust it).

However, if you're willing to take it to 11, you can take a look at a linux-based rescue disk and reformat the USB stick. Linux is like a honey badger with respect to NTFS... it gives no fucks. It's been a bit, but found SystemRescue if you want to give it a try.

I wouldn't be able to guide you any further, but Google is your friend and that's how I'd muscle through it.

Good Luck!

Given some of the other comments, it sounds like what you really want is not ‘your own Linux OS’, it’s ‘a customized system recovery and offline maintenance environment’.

Given this, I’d suggest SystemRescueCD as a starting point. It probably covers what you need out of box without you needing to make any changes, but also provides ways to create customized versions for specific purposes.

If you really want to go all-in on your own though, my suggestions would be to look at Gentoo (great for super-custom environments), Arch (also very good for custom environments, but decisively less flexible than Gentoo, SystemRescueCD is currently based on Arch) or possibly even Buildroot (even better for minimalistic custom environments, but also requires much more concrete knowledge of what you actually need).

I am guessing your BIOS is intact and you have messed up the boot partition. In that case, I would suggest using system rescue (https://www.system-rescue.org/Download/) to copy your files to an external drive and install W10 afresh. You can also try creating a W10 bootable and repair the existing installation, although I don't have much experience with that. But the other method definitely works.

I can't rightly tell you what's exactly wrong with your system, but the error is telling you that GRUB has a config (commandline in grub terms) which tells it where to find your root partition: root=/dev/almalinux/root

That is a LVM mount - the "almalinux" part is the volume group and the "root" part is the logical volume; they appear after LVM is activated for this VG (it's complex under the hood - /dev/<VG> is a symlink created when a volume group comes online at boot, it's dynamic). The error is saying "you told me this was a thing, but after I boot, activate LVM and look for it, can't find it" - what that is, who knows since it's unique to your device. Something as simple as renaming the VG without updating GRUB with that new name is enough to break this specific thing.

Download a copy of System Rescue and boot it off a USB stick, then try to type vgchange -ay almalinux to activate the VG+LV (if the boot already did not do so), and then you can go from there for debugging purposes. You could even just mount that LV (if it works), get the text file off and just scrap the thing and try again if you can't figure out what you've accidentally broken.

To do that any distro works really, but my go-to for repairing Windows machines since years ago has been SystemRescueCD

It has all the tools you need to do any work on any partition out of the box, is minimal so boots very fast , lightweight, and creates the boot partition in ram so you can work various machines at the same time with a single pendrive

Also comes with xfce as GUI (i almost never use it but the option is there) by typing startx

I'm going to guess that there is a GRUB issue and needs to be repaired. Get a live USB like SystemRescueCD and follow these steps to try and repair GRUB.

You may have to reinstall. But first try chrooting in from the install medium and regenerating GRUB. Here is an article about chrooting:

https://www.incredigeek.com/home/how-to-chroot-into-a-linux-drive/

Then open a terminal and do:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

There is also System Rescue CD that is a live system and although it may take a little longer to download, burn and boot it, it is probably easier than chrooting, although if the computer you are using is your only machine it may not be convenient.

https://www.system-rescue.org/disk-partitioning/Repairing-a-damaged-Grub/

There's a rescue disk that looks at the disk, finds bootable partitions and then tries to boot them.

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

However since you do get a grub screen, you can try booting your OS if you know the particulars of your disks and boot partitions. As a hint, windows would probably be more standardized and easier to boot this way. Then you can figure out how to fix your install.

In windows you should have an option to change login. The current logon is going to be something like DOMAIN\DAD.

If you change the login to .\whateverthelocalaccountnameis it'll disassociate from the domain and try to log in locally, if you have a local account password that is. The problem is that the account is trying to connect to an active directory which doesn't exist or the user no longer has credentials.

If that fails you can download a free tool to load onto a thumbdrive and boot to. Systemrescue is a solid option which isnt too hard to use. From there you can blank out any local passwords (assuming no drive lock or encryption) and log into the machine.

I would suggest booting a live USB, such as SystemRescueCd and checking if the disk shows up under there. If it does, I would suggest backing up the data and reformatting it.

If it doesn't, your drive may be corrupted. SystemRescueCd has utilities to repair/debug corrupt filesystems.

Looks like your hard drive used for booting may be failing. I would recommend getting a live bootable USB, such as SystemRescueCd and backing up your data if you haven't already. After backing it up, I would suggest reinstalling Windows or installing Windows to a different hard drive.

Do you have another hd you can install to? If you're having problems with multiple os installs it sounds like a hd issue.

If that's not possible, for whatever reason, load up a linux bootdrive, like systemresue and you'll have a host of tools at your disposal. Including account credential manipulation and various forms of hd fault analysis.

BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST

Then try Gparted from something like a systemrescue image. Usb, disc etc.

Gparted will resize partions and some filesystems. Ext4 is supported.

You could try to use a bootable usb/cd/dvd/hardrrive to see if it will boot from that. Many options, SystemRescueCD for example.

If that works you should be able to access the internal drive and copy/move/access the files to another USB, storage or to the desktop over the network.

Other option is remove the harddrive and connect it to the desktop, difficulty will depend on the model of laptop but reasonable chance there is a video of someone doing it on youtube if it is not intuitive.

You should then be able to connect the drive via sata cable to the motherboard of the desktop and accees it from there. If you don't want to venture inside the desktop a sata-usb cable will allow you to use the drive like a usb stick and is quite reasonable, ~$10.

Good luck!

I did just that some months ago. If you have large enough external drive, that's quite easy. I backed-up the whole system with SystemRescueCD and FSArchiver to an external drive, removed and re-created the partition and reinstalled the system from the backup.

I'd recommend booting off of a usb to do it, so that every last memory address can be tested. I used SystemRescueCD but I'm sure there's a lighter weight option. Good call on xf86-video. I also set intel_idle.max cstate to 1 in my kernel parameters and that seems to have helped. I think our best bet is to just keep eliminating variables.

Non ho capito un tubo di quel che vedi... Prendi una live GNU/Linux, es. System Rescue (https://www.system-rescue.org) avvia da lei, apri GParted e vedi cosa GParted riconosce, quelle sono le tue partizioni al di la delle stranezze di Windows.

Se vuoi una live Windows hirensbootcd.org e sergeistrelec.ru sono le sole che conosco, han i limiti di Windows, ma sono un Windows che avvia da pennetta un desktop e da li fai quel che vuoi con lui.

Per il poco che conosco di Windows la partizione "di ripristino" è opzionale, ma certo non la è l'ESP...

A basic check is to power it on and see if you can get into the BIOS. You can do more advanced testing by making a LiveCD or LiveUSB from https://www.system-rescue.org/ and running the "memtester" and "stress" utilities.

The Linux tool DDRescue is a great one to try - it can resume cloning, skip/retry bad sectors and can even start at the end of the disk and work backwards. It can be great for drives that are on their last legs. I’ve used it to clone drives that were so dead they’d only work after putting them in the freezer for an hour or so and then they’d die after an hour of use.

It’s available in a few live Linux CDS / USB distros - this is the one I liked the best: https://www.system-rescue.org

Non c'entra col boot di un disco sata ma con la usb: tutto lo storage usb è scsi emulato.

Il trim è una procedura per marcare come libero spazio disco non più usato per informare il controller di un ssd che può "considerarlo libero" per distribuire le write() in modo da allungare la vita alla memoria flash. Viene eseguito periodicamente sugli ssd da parte del sistema operativo.

Per la copia prendi pure dd, ddrescue è un clone fatto per "esser molto insistente" e tollerante agli errori di lettura per tentare di recuperare dati, l'ho citato perché è uno dei fork di dd più noti e perché puoi usarlo ma al posto di installarlo apposta dd è built-in su quasi ogni distro GNU/Linux e su vari unix, OSX incluso... Se scarichi ad es. il System Rescue [1] è compreso nella live. L'immagine è poco più grande perché include la label del disco, la tabella delle partizioni e via dicendo che non sono "viste" dai singoli filesystems nel computo della loro dimensione.

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

Scarica una live GNU/Linux, es. System Rescue [1], mettilo come da istruzioni su un'altra penna usb, avvia con lui, monta un disco in cui copierai i files recuperati. Apri un terminale e dai photorec /dev/quelcheèlapenna e segui l'wizard. A dispetto del nome non recupera solo foto (XXX) ma una paccata di tipi di files. Non c'è un software commerciale o FLOSS che rivaleggi con lui :-)

Se hai paura che la penna abbia anche problemi di salute fisica puoi farne un'immagine con dd/ddrescue e lanciare photorec su questa così se anche il ferro parte puoi far tutto con più calma.

Il tempo di recupero varia con le dimensioni ma non è proprio veloce e il volume dove butti i files recuperati deve ovviamente essere un po' più grande di quel che ti aspetti di recuperare.

Se vuoi questa strada posso guidarti qui passo passo, resta anche da utile guida per altri, non lo scrivo direttamente ora perché è banale ma lungo quindi ha senso solo se poi lo fai e si procede passo-passo...

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

In addition to what /u/dhope0000 said about making a copy, it sounds like if you were unable to even mount the device, you were unable to damage it.

Restore the partition to a size at least as large as the original and perhaps everything will work? Partitioning only modifies partition table, not the data.

You can boot the system in various ways, like the Ubuntu installation media or https://www.system-rescue.org/ .

Also: do backups! Kopia and Borgbackup are good ones.

Option 1:
Can you enter safe mode?

Safe Mode - digitalcitizen.life

If you can enter safe mode, save all your important data on an external hhd, usb-stick, dvd or NAS.

Unfortunately I do not see a way to solve your problem.

Did that help?

Option 2: If you have access to another computer, create a rescue-usb-stick:

Rescue Disc - system-rescue.org

For this, you will probably need the software RUFUS, which you can download for free.

I have used www.system-rescue.org to fix partition mistakes and it worked nicely. The last one I fixed had a bootable linux drive improperly converted to GPT, and this tool fixed it.

Well, if the drive is not even mounting / being seen, you have big problems.

Maybe boot from a USB stick with a rescue system (maybe https://www.system-rescue.org/ ) on it, and do a block-level copy from the bad disk to a good one ?

if you boot into system rescue and zero the drive , but i would caution doing this because it puts alot more wear and tear on the drive but in the end there will be no trace of the previous files.

It might be useful to base your installation on a distro designed to be run from a USB stick like SystemRescueCd.

It has a base read-only system from squashfs, with persistence overlayed with overlayfs (possible located on the existing HD?).

https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Creating_a_backing_store/

The only disadvantage is system updates require building a new image, but I've found it can be done fairly quickly from a customised VM image.

Trinity has a self burning version which I take it includes software to burn to CD/DVD/Install on USB or just down the ISO version (150MB) and use a program like rufus to create a bootable USB https://trinityhome.org/trinity_rescue_kit_download/

System rescue just has an ISO image file you download and then use rufus or similar to make a bootable USB.

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

Installing Windows from a USB flash drive will reinstall Windows from scratch over the existing copy. You'll then have to reinstall drivers and programs that came preinstalled.

That's not a factory restore, which is fine if you're ok with that.

However if you want try to blank or reset the admin password you can download System Rescue CD and use the tool chntpw

It can be burned onto a CD or USB stick.

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

ALEZ is the Arch Linux bootable "installer" w/ zfs support baked in. The Arch Linux install environment is mildly similar to system rescue cd in that it is just a CLI w/ a bunch of tools.

I'd only do this if you needed to isolate your pool from everything. Looks like OP figured out what was keeping it open though, so no need.

Could also boot into single user mode, how ever that is done on your system.