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. TRK is a complete command line based distribution, apart from a few tools like qtparted, links, partition image and midnight commander.
Some of Trinity Rescur Kit’s most significant features
- Easily reset windows passwords
- Full read/write and rpm support
- Multiple virus scan products integrated in a single uniform commandline with online update capability
- 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 virus scanners
- Full proxy server support
- Fun a samba fileserver (Windows-like filesharing)
- 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
- Rootkit detection uitilities
Although version 3.3 is still beta, it is recommended you download this version, as most features which were included in version 3.2 are still running just fine (and are more up-to-date) and the new stuff is presumed to be running fine too.
TRK can be booted three different ways:
- as a bootable CD which you can burn yourself from a downloadable iso file
- from a USB stick/disk (optionally also a fixed disk), installable from Windows or from the bootable TRK cd
- from network over PXE, which requires some modifications on your local network (version 3.2). Version 3.3 has the ability to act as a network bootserver itself, without any modifications to your local network.
The idea behind Trinity Rescue Kit
From the author:
Back in 2001, I had this great bootable dos cd I created, packed with all great utilities for offline PC operations called “The Vault”. Unfortunately, the Vault consisted for 90% of software you should pay for. So distributing it in a legal way was certainly no option and I ‘m not the guy that wants to spend his time in maintaining something that ‘s illegal anyway.
So I brewed on the idea of creating a free bootable Linux CD containing all available free tools that can help you in any way of rescueing your Windows installation. And eventually, this is how far it has gotten now.
Trinity Rescue Kit is based on binaries and scripts from several other distributions, like Timo ‘s Rescue CD, Mandriva 2005 and Fedora Core 3 and 4, as well as many original source packages and tools from other distros. Startup procedure and methods, several scripts and concept is completely selfmade or at least heavily adapted.