Linux Live Session

What is a Linux Live Session

Linux is a great tool for troubleshooting. It can run off a USB drive in a live session. This allows you to use a wide range of tools to manipulate the disks, data, and hardware of your computer/OS without worrying about anything running on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

But I use Windows!

That’s fine, a Linux live session can be used regardless of your operating system.

I don’t want to install Linux!

The live session does not install Linux onto your main disk, the computer just boots into a USB drive containing Linux. Your main disk won’t be touched at all unless you choose to.

I don’t know Linux!

Our live session is designed to be very easy to use for Windows users to understand, so Windows users should find it pretty straightforward.

1. Obtaining media

r/Techsupport Rescue Media

A Linux ISO has been made for r/Techsupport that has many of the proper tools pre-installed to make rescuing a system easier. If you are unfamiliar with Linux we recommend that you use this version.

Download

Source files for Debian live-build

The username and password for the media is user and live

Official XUbuntu Media

You may also use the official XUbuntu ISO and load your own tools as needed. It is Ubuntu-based, so follow standard Ubuntu (or Ubuntu/Debian apt) instructions for installing additional tools.

Download

2. Creating bootable media

This will require a USB drive that is at least the size of the ISO you downloaded.

Windows

Caution

This will wipe all existing data on the USB drive.

1. Download and run Rufus.
2. Select “ISO Image” and then browse for the ISO image.
3. Select which flash drive you want to put the installer on.
4. Select the Partition scheme (GPT/MBR) depending on your motherboard’s capabilities.
5. Click “Start” and wait for it to finish.
6. Eject the USB flash drive.

There is no need to mess with any other settings in Rufus.

macOS

1. Open the Terminal.
2. First, without the flash drive inserted, run diskutil list in the Terminal.
3. Plug in the flash drive and run diskutil list again. You can do this to identify the drive device path. The device path is in the form of /dev/diskN, where N is a number (example: /dev/disk1).
4. Unmount the flash drive you have identified. diskutil unmountdisk /dev/diskN.
5. Convert the ISO image. hdiutil convert /path/to/image.iso -format UDRW -o /path/to/ubuntu.img
6. Run sudo dd if=/path/to/image.img of=/dev/rdiskN status=progress to create a bootable drive from the image. Using /dev/rdiskN instead of /dev/diskN usually results in faster media creation.
7. Wait until dd finishes. The terminal will display the next prompt when it’s done.
8. Eject the USB flash drive: diskutil eject /dev/diskN.

Linux

1. First, without the flash drive inserted, run lsblk in the Terminal.
2. Plug in the flash drive and run lsblk again. You can do this to identify the drive device path. The device path is usually in the form of /dev/sdX, where X is a letter (example: /dev/sdb).
3. Run dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress to create a bootable drive from the ISO.
4. Wait until dd finishes. The terminal will display the next prompt when it’s done.

Ventoy (Windows and Linux)

Follow our Ventoy guide to make one flash drive that can boot multiple ISO files, this is a more advanced method but suitable for power users who may not have heard about it before.

3. Boot the live media

1. Press your ‘Boot menu’ key when you power on the machine to access your boot options.
   • You may need to go through BIOS and change boot priority if you cannot find or hit the boot options key during boot.
2. Choose your USB
3. Once it boots select ‘Try’ or ‘Live’

Things to do

Stress tests

• Stress-ng - Comprehensive system stress testing
• Sysbench - Database and application benchmarking
• Stressful Application Test - Memory stress testing tool (requires installation)
• fio - Advanced storage I/O benchmark (professional-grade, multi-threaded)

Filesystem support

• e2fsprogs - Linux ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem utilities (includes badblocks, debugfs, resize2fs)
• ntfs-3g - Windows NTFS filesystem read/write support
• hfsprogs - Apple HFS/HFS+ filesystem utilities (Mac support)
• exfatprogs - exFAT filesystem support (modern cross-platform USB/SD cards)
• btrfs-progs - Btrfs filesystem utilities (modern Linux filesystem)

Additional information:

• Linux Filesystem Guide - Information on how the Linux filesystem works
• Identifying Drives in Linux - Guide to identifying disks and partitions in Linux
• Linux permission basics - Overview of Linux file permissions and ownership

Disk and data management

• Wipe disks
• Disk Manipulation with Gparted
• Verify Disk Health

File recovery tools

• Data Retrieval/Recovery - Overview of data recovery tools and methods
• gddrescue - Disk imaging and data recovery from failing drives
• PhotoRec - File recovery from various media types
• TestDisk - Partition recovery and repair tool
• Clonezilla - Disk cloning and imaging
• safecopy - Data recovery from damaged media

Encryption tools

• cryptsetup - LUKS disk encryption management
• dislocker - BitLocker encrypted drive access (Windows drive recovery)

Network tools

• dnsutils - DNS lookup utilities (dig, nslookup, host)
• mtr-tiny - Network diagnostic tool combining ping and traceroute
• gnome-nettool - GUI network diagnostic tool (ping, netstat, traceroute, port scan)
• wireshark - Network protocol analyzer and packet capture

Hardware information

• hw-probe - Comprehensive hardware probing and reporting (Think Specify but Linux)
• hardinfo - System profiler and hardware information GUI
• inxi - Comprehensive hardware information script (CPU, GPU, RAM, disks, network, sensors)