Lifeboat Linux

Live linux distro combined in one ~35MB file. Runs as a EFI binary so it should run on any UEFI computer (PC or Mac) without installation. Just copy one file to EFI system partition and boot.

Download: https://github.com/hugochinchilla/lifeboat_linux/releases

Motivation

Sometimes I mess my computer and need to use a live USB to be able to access my filesystem and edit some config file to bring it back to life.

I was inspired by OneFileLinux to create a minimal rescue system based on that idea so I don't need a live USB anymore.

Acknowledgments:

• Zhovner for OneFileLinux.
• D4rk4 for it's OneFileLinux fork with updated kernel and alpine versions.

What to expect

This distro can be used to access your filesystem and perform basic tasks as edit config files. It can be also handy to resize partitions.

Cabled networking is supported, wireless support is not due to the need to add too many drivers and firmwares, maybe some day I will make an extended variant with wireless support.

What's included?:

• parted
• efibootmgr
• filesystems: ext4, ext3, btrfs, xfs, dos and their related utilities.
• lvm2
• mdadm
• dmraid
• dm-crypt
• cryptsetup
• gptfdisk
• fdisk

Building

make clean build

The look in dist folder for LifeboatLinux.efi

Incremental builds

Incremental buils are possible for quick iterations but are prone to contamination by the previous build process. Just do make build.

Depending on what you are trying to do you may need to make some manual cleanup first on the rootfs dir, if you know what you are doing it will probably be ok for testing, but always prefer a clean build for final use.

Installing

Get the EFI file (or build it) and drop it in your EFI folder. If using secure boot remember to sign it. I won't cover how to add it to your bootloader because there are many possible setups to cover it here.

User customization

You can place a directory in your ESP partition with custom scripts, notes, or whatever you want.

Place custom resources on (ESP partition)/EFI/Boot/Lifeboat/UserScripts.

If you create a special file named init this file will be executed by the shell on login, you can use it to customize the keyboard layout, font-size, set custom shell aliases, etc.