Anyone who dual-boots, runs, or manages a heterogeneous network with Windows and Linux workstations must occasionally contend with offline or dead systems. Of course, the open source world has plenty of good tools to help get these boxes back on track, or at least recover valuable data. Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is a small yet powerful bootable Linux distribution that rescues, repairs, resets passwords, and clones dead Linux and Windows installations. Trinity Rescue Kit or TRK is a free live Linux distribution that aims specifically at recovery and repair operations on Windows machines, but is equally usable for Linux recovery issues.

If you take the time to read the 46-page documentation and learn the program, you�ll be rewarded next time disaster strikes. Among the tools that will be at your disposal are a script that runs 4 different malware scanners, a tool for resetting passwords, a Registry editor, a program that clones an NTFS partition to another PC over a network, a mass undeleter that tries to recover every deleted file on the drive, several tools for recovering data off a formatted or dying disk, two tools for fixing master boot record repair programs, and hardware diagnostics.

When TRK boots, you’ll see a graphical boot menu with a few options to control the startup. You can make TRK run entirely from memory, if you need to mount a CD to assist in the recovery process or to burn the rescued data. TRK can also look for scripts on a USB or diskette and run those, scan all detected drives for viruses, or configure itself as a SSH server. You can combine several of these options, but you’re better off doing that from the non-graphical boot screen, since the graphical one doesn’t print what you type.

The rescue kit will detect network cards and try to mount them using DHCP. TRK comes with kernel 2.6.14.3 with most default options left on in order to support important hardware, such as network cards and disk controllers. I tried it on various machines, and the wired Ethernet card detection success rate was 100%. But it couldn’t detect all wireless hardware, such as the Broadcom adapter on the Acer laptop or the Linksys on the desktop, both of which lack native Linux drivers. It did, however, pick up the PC Card wireless card with ease. TRK also supports USB network cards.

Some of the most important features:
-full read/write and rpm support (since build 333)
-easily reset windows passwords (backup and restore option in 3.3)
-4 different virusscan products integrated in a single uniform commandline with online update capability (5 in version 3.3)
-full ntfs write support thanks to ntfs-3g (all other drivers included as well)
-clone NTFS filesystems over the network
-wide range of hardware support (kernel 2.6.39.3 and recent kudzu hwdata)
-easy script to find all local filesystems
-self update capability to include and update all virusscanners
-full proxyserver support.
-run a samba fileserver (windows like filesharing)
-run a ssh server
-recovery and undeletion of files with utilities and procedures
-recovery of lost partitions
-evacuation of dying disks
-UTF-8 international character support.
-powerful multicast disk cloning utility for any filesystem
-2 rootkit detection uitilities (version 3.3).
-elaborated documentation (+manpages as of 3.3).
-elaborated documentation