Rescatux 0.32 beta 1 has been released.

Downloads:

• Rescatux 0.32 beta 1 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 (Sourceforge)
• (MD5)

Rescatux 0.32b1 size is about 406 Megabytes.

Some thoughts:

Trendynick, from the irc, sent me a nice mockup of how he thought Rescapp should be designed. The final result is 100% as he expected but most of it.

Now we can add new options without bothering about design because we have got an scroll bar for seeing all the options.

The best thing about the new design is that you can see all the available options in one glance.  That makes easier for new comers to discover the truly Rescatux potential. It also makes easier to run options because the Run option screen which shows the html help, as always,  has had some of its buttons rearranged.

As I was not able to use RazorQT from unstable or testing Debian, and as LXQT was even more difficult I had to drop RazorQT and fallback to LXDE (which it’s currently based on GTK2). The long waited dream of an almost  QT based rescue cd has been paused. That’s the reason why I had to change 0.31 to 0.32.

The other reason for 0.31 to 0.32 change is because I am dropping Super Grub2 Disk integration. I have been thinking about a Rescatux Plus edition that would include it but I’m not very sure of it. I would rather prefer to have only one Rescatux download and then, if you want to, you can build your USB with both Super Grub2 Disk and Rescatux in it.

If you wanted an ISO for the your CDROM with both Super Grub2 Disk and  Rescatux, well, you will have to burn two cds. If you don’t agree with this decision please comment below so that we can gather actual feedback on how many people think the Super Grub2 Disk is something useful for them or not.

As you can see one drawback from using isolinux instead Grub2 from Super Grub2 Disk is that the logo and boot entries are the Live ones (Rescatux is based on Debian Live project) instead of Rescatux ones. As this is a beta and I don’t want to mess in a long time with Rescatux code I have decided not to worry about that.

Unless you think you are going to have problems with network connections (which it’s not actually needed for Rescatux to work, only for asking for support) if you have Rescatux 0.31 beta 5 there’s no need for you to download this version.

Of course, you are welcome to download it so that you can give us feedback so that we can improve it.

Fixed bugs:

• Networking detection improved (fallback to network-manager-gnome)
• Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
• Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.

Improvements:

• Super Grub2 Disk is no longer included. That makes easier to put the ISO to USB devices thanks to standard multiboot tools which support Debian Live cds.
• Rescapp UI has been redesigned
  • Every option is at hand at the first screen.
  • Rescapp options can be scrolled. That makes it easier to add new options without bothering on final design.
  • Run option screen buttons have been rearranged to make it easier to read.
• RazorQT has been replaced by LXDE which seems more mature. LXQT will have to wait.
• WICD has been replaced by network-manager-gnome. That makes easier to connect to wired and wireless networks.
• It is no longer based on Debian Unstable (sid) branch.

Known bugs:

• Handling of directories with spaces when detecting Windows SAM files is not optimal
• Rescatux logo is not shown at boot
• Boot entries are named “Live xxxx” instead of “Rescatux xxxx”

Pending features or bugfixes for 0.32 stable release:

• Select keyboard from Grub2 boot or Isolinux boot so that you can type your correct password when resetting Gnu/Linux password. (Or type password without masking it).
• New option: Easy Grub fix: Runs both Restore Grub and Update Grub options
• New option: Easy Windows Admin that runs: unlock user, promote user to admin and blank admin user password so that you can straight-forward as a windows admin user.
• Rewriting of Windows chntpw based options so that source code is not repeated
• Use of new 140201 chntpw version

Distro facts:

• Packages versions for this release can be found at Rescatux 0.32b1 packages.
• It’s based on Debian Wheezy (Stable).
• The beta download link is: https://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/rescatuxdownloads/rescatux-beta/
• Bug tracker is found at: Cenatic Forge Rescatux Issue Tracker
• Desktop: LXDE

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Help Rescatux project if you cannot wait:

I am very busy right now at work. So you should expect two, three or four months of Rescatux development stalling. These are some of the funny tasks that anyone can easily contribute to:

• Making a youtube video for the new options.
• Make sure documentation for the new options is right.
• Translate the documentation of new options to Spanish.
• Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.

If you want to help please contact us here:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.31 beta 5 has been released.

Fixed bugs:

• Hard disk detection was improved when non standard partitions such as LVM or encrypted ones are present.

Internal improvement:

• Added cryptsetup packages to default build so that we can mount LUKS partitions later.

Known bugs:

• Handling of directories with spaces when detecting Windows SAM files is not optimal
• Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager
• Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops

Pending features or bugfixes for 0.31 stable release:

• Select keyboard from Grub2 boot or Isolinux boot so that you can type your correct password when resetting Gnu/Linux password
• New option: Easy Grub fix: Runs both Restore Grub and Update Grub options
• New option: Easy Windows Admin that runs: unlock user, promote user to admin and blank admin user password so that you can straight-forward as a windows admin user.
• Rewriting of Windows chntpw based options so that source code is not repeated

Downloads:

• Rescatux 0.31 beta 5 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 (Sourceforge)
• (MD5)

Rescatux 0.31b5 size is about 430 Megabytes.

Distro facts:

• Packages versions for this release can be found at Rescatux 0.31b5 packages.
• It’s based on Debian Wheezy (Stable) and Debian Sid (for razor-qt).
• The beta download link is: https://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/rescatuxdownloads/rescatux-beta/
• Bug tracker is found at: Cenatic Forge Rescatux Issue Tracker

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Help Rescatux project if you cannot wait:

I am very busy right now at work. So you should expect two, three or four months of Rescatux development stalling. These are some of the funny tasks that anyone can easily contribute to: Making a youtube video for the new options. Make sure documentation for the new options is right. Translate the documentation of new options to Spanish. Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.

If you want to help please contact us here:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Some thoughts:

Just another iteration in Rescatux development. Now it seems that a big bug has been detected. In some hard disks setup Rescapp was not able to parse all the hard disk names and its sizes correctly. That’s only two lines of code changed but a new release needs to be made public.

The addition of cryptsetup package is for 0.32 or 0.33 development. Don’t expect something related for the final user in the short term. Somehow in the future I will add LUKS support to Rescatux. You can check my personal blog post on Rescatux Development: Detecting LUKS encrypted partitions to help me on that subject.

As I had already said for 0.31 beta 4 version this release uses SG2D 2.00 beta 6 that means that it supports both BIOS and EFI boot. You’re invited to test that functionality too.

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.31 beta 4 has been released.
Update: I add a video from Bóson Treinamentos em Tecnologia which describes quite well the Rescatux 0.31 beta 4 release. Video audio is Portuguese.

New features:

• Better handle of /boot/grub2 in Fedora installations when running grub-install or update-grub options
• Update Grub should work in any Grub2 system (previous version only worked on Debian or Ubuntu distributions)
• New option: Promote a Windows user to Administrator
• XFE is the new file manager instead of qtfm
• New option: Unlock a Windows user to re-enable it
• LVM and RAID support for Restore Grub and Update Grub options (It seems it already worked from 0.30.2)

Known bugs:

• Handling of directories with spaces when detecting Windows SAM files is not optimal
• Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager
• Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops

Pending features or bugfixes for 0.31 stable release:

• Select keyboard from Grub2 boot or Isolinux boot so that you can type your correct password when resetting Gnu/Linux password
• New option: Easy Grub fix: Runs both Restore Grub and Update Grub options
• New option: Easy Windows Admin that runs: unlock user, promote user to admin and blank admin user password so that you can straight-forward as a windows admin user.
• Rewriting of Windows chntpw based options so that source code is not repeated

Downloads:

• Rescatux 0.31 beta 4 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 (Berlios)
• (MD5)

Rescatux 0.31b4 size is about 427 Megabytes.

Distro facts:

• Packages versions for this release can be found at Rescatux 0.31b4 packages.
• It’s based on Debian Wheezy (Stable) and Debian Sid (for razor-qt).
• The beta download link is: https://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/rescatuxdownloads/rescatux-beta/
• Bug tracker is found at: Cenatic Forge Rescatux Issue Tracker

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Help Rescatux project if you cannot wait:

I am very busy right now at work. So you should expect two, three or four months of Rescatux development stalling. These are some of the funny tasks that anyone can easily contribute to: Making a youtube video for the new options. Make sure documentation for the new options is right. Translate the documentation of new options to Spanish. Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.

If you want to help please contact us here:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Some thoughts:

I think that making Rescatux 0.31 stable is more defined than ever. The keyboard support needs to be there so that Gnu/Linux password change is done with the right password and not another one, and also so that people are not annoyed when trying to use chat. Improve the documentation so that there’s nothing missing and nothing more.

There are also these new easy options that combine individual options functionality into one just to make live easier for everyone also but that doesn’t seem too complex to develop and it will encourage to reuse code and thus improve the rescatux_lib library.

This release uses SG2D 2.00 beta 6, which it will be released soon. That means that it supports both BIOS and EFI boot hopefully. You’re invited to test that functionality too.

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.31 beta 3 has been released.

Changelog:

• Razor-qt desktop was updated from 4.x version to 5.x version
• Added a frame so that embedded webpage is seen inside a grey square.
• Now xchat nickname shows Rescapp version so that accurate help can be given in the chat.
• Added the following expert tools:
  • boot-repair
  • clean-ubiquity
  • os-uninstaller
  • testdisk
  • photorec
• Rearranged as an expert tool:
  • gparted
• Added these CLI programs for experts:
  • extundelete

Downloads:

• Rescatux 0.31 beta 3 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 (Berlios)
• (MD5)

Rescatux 0.31b3 size is about 424 Megabytes.

Distro facts:

• Packages versions for this release can be found at Rescatux 0.31b3 packages.
• It’s based on Debian Wheezy (Stable) and not Debian (Testing).
• The beta download link is: https://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/rescatuxdownloads/rescatux-beta/
• Bug tracker is found at: Cenatic Forge Rescatux Issue Tracker

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Some little thoughts
I’ve added these expert tools because, basically, I don’t have to implement boot-repair functionality into Rescapp wizard (And the idea is one or two years old :(). Another reason might be because testdisk, photorec and extundelete can be useful in some situations but… again… I would rather include its functionality into Rescapp script (instead of adding disconnected apps).

Not everything is bad because adding these tools has made me add the Expert tools options menu to Rescapp. Now you can find Gparted inside of Rescapp instead of having to search for it in the Start menu.

I’m not sure if I want to freeze 0.31 beta 3 as it is right now or if I’m going to add one of these things: 1. Add more chntpw-ng functionality to rescapp. 2. Improve the Restore Grub and Update Grub to be able to detect Logical Volumes (LVM).

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.31 beta 1 has been released.

Changelog:

• System updated to next Debian Stable Wheezy
• Gparted was updated to 0.12.1 version which includes new option: Attempt data rescue…
• Gpart package was added so that Gparted attempt data rescue option works ok. It can also be used by expert users.

Downloads:

• Rescatux 0.31 beta 1 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 (Berlios)
• (MD5)

Rescatux 0.31b1 size is about 396 Megabytes.

Distro facts:

• Distribution origin is Spanish and not French.
• Packages versions for this release can be found at Rescatux 0.31b1 packages.
• Now it’s based on Debian (Testing) and not Debian (Stable). Rescatux 0.31 stable will probably be based on Debian (Stable) as Wheezy will be stable itself.
• The beta download link is: https://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/rescatuxdownloads/rescatux-beta/
• Bug tracker is found at: Cenatic Forge Rescatux Issue Tracker

Multi-distro makers warning:

You probably need to update your script to reflect that default kernel is vmlinuz1 instead of old vmlinuz.

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment all the current options and they seem to work ok. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

• Super Grub(2) Mailing list
• Rescatux Forum
• Chat

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.30 Release Candidate 1 has been released.

Rescatux 0.30 beta 7 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 MultiMirror #1
Mirror #2
MD5 (372 Megabytes)
Changelog:

• Beta options are described as (BETA).
• Syslinux version has AMD64 boot as the default one.
• Copyright notices were added

So, aproximately in a month time if there is not any special problem I’ll release 0.30 stable at last with a big post aimed at internet press which only copy and paste so that they explain accurately what Rescatux is, what it’s not, and what SGD and SG2D are.

As I said this is Rescatux 0.30 roadmap updated:

Bugs and Feature requests they are found in Forja Cenatic. Thank you Cenatic!

Feature requests

• (0.30b6) Change user password
• (0.30b6) Reset sudoers file

Bugs to be fixed

• (0.30b4) Detect 64bit
• (0.30b6) Bind Ctrl+q to Quit
• (0.30b5) Hard disk order not working with n different than 2

Issues that need to be addressed before the release

• (Web at 15 August 2012) What Rescatux does not do
• (0.30b8) 0.30 series videos
• (0.30rc1) Review Copyright notice
• (0.30b7) Graphical documentation
• (0.30b7) Spanish graphical documentation

Whenever I release a new beta the idea is to copy and paste this roadmap and to replace the dots (..) with the beta version where the feature has been implemented. An example would be: (0.30b3).

Rescatux 0.30 beta 7 has been released.

Rescatux 0.30 beta 7 Cdrom or USB ISO for x86 or amd64 MultiMirror #1
Mirror #2 Mirror #3
MD5 (372 Megabytes)
Changelog:

• Graphical documentation completed.
• Spanish graphical documentation completed.

As I said this is Rescatux 0.30 roadmap updated:

Bugs and Feature requests they are found in Forja Cenatic. Thank you Cenatic!

Feature requests

• (0.30b6) Change user password
• (0.30b6) Reset sudoers file

Bugs to be fixed

• (0.30b4) Detect 64bit
• (0.30b6) Bind Ctrl+q to Quit
• (0.30b5) Hard disk order not working with n different than 2

Issues that need to be addressed before the release

• (..) What Rescatux does not do
• (..) 0.30 series videos
• (..) Review Copyright notice
• (0.30b7) Graphical documentation
• (0.30b7) Spanish graphical documentation

Whenever I release a new beta the idea is to copy and paste this roadmap and to replace the dots (..) with the beta version where the feature has been implemented. An example would be: (0.30b3).