Download the 64-bit version of the Rescuezilla's Weekly Rolling Release version: rescuezilla-2.3.1-48-g3483a049-64bit.impish.iso
Rescuezilla weekly rolling releases
Since 2019 I have consistently released a large Rescuezilla update every 4-6 months. But due to work commitments I completely missed my April 2022 Rescuezilla release. I just took a week off to prevent oncoming burnout and to focus on Rescuezilla, but I couldn't complete all the tasks to get Rescuezilla v2.4 released.
To help fix this, from today I am starting rolling release updates between major stable releases, exactly like Clonezilla. I am aiming to have a release with new features released to the community every 1-2 weeks.
This new release schedule will also give my loyal supporters on the crowdfunding website Patreon more insight into exactly what they’re supporting. It's so great and humbling to see 63 people support my free app. Right now supporters contribute money to the project monthly, but outside of GitHub and the Sourceforge forum there is often 6 months of radio silence followed by a sudden massive release “v2.X” release that gets widely publicized and mirrored across the internet which is inevitably followed a week later by a somewhat embarrassing high-priority bug fix "v2.X.1" that gets far less publicity but is the actual version that people should be using for the next 6 months. This new approach will also hopefully eliminate the need for those bugfix releases.
I will try to keep the weekly releases as well-tested as possible, but conservative industrial users will understandably want to always stick with the latest versioned release (currently v2.3.1) for a widely-used release with an up-to-date table of known bugs. Exact filename for each weekly release, and other related details are still subject to change.
I continue to be fully committed to Rescuezilla and will find ways to increase the project's velocity as it begins to supplant all proprietary backup imaging tools as per the project roadmap.
Changes
- Added ability to compress images using bzip2 algorithm (#290)
- Moved post-completion action to in-progress page (#316)
- Not recommended when cloning: #337
- Added ability to set custom SSH port (#336)
- Many existing translations updated, but also added:
- Arabic/ﺎﻠﻋﺮﺒﻳﺓ (ar-EG) (Translation in-progress)
- Catalan/Català (ca-ES) (Translation in-progress)
- Czech/Čeština (cs-CZ) (Translation in-progress)
- Hungarian/Magyar (hu-HU) Translation in-progress)
- Slovak/Slovenčina (sk-SK) (Translation in-progress)
KNOWN BUG: When cloning, don't use auto-restart/auto-shutdown drop-down: #337. Restore worked fine, this is being investigated.
This release notably does NOT have the following features:
- New builds based on Debian 11 Bullseye & Debian Sid for best handling of recent hardware
- Compile of latest version of partclone from source code to address error message when making backup of BTRFS filesystem (which effects many Fedora users) (#168)
- Adding ability to select Image Explorer mount destination (#260)
- Adding a command-line interface (#258)
- Bringing back 32-bit release (#232)
- Many other longstanding bugs (see Bug Advisories table below, plus Github issues page)
...but these features will incrementally become available in the coming weeks, as I develop and test them.
Please consider giving a like on AlternativeTo so that more people can discover Rescuezilla!
Details of all previous releases available in the changelog.
Compatibility
Rescuezilla creates backups that are fully compatible with the industry-standard Clonezilla tool. Rescuezilla works with images created by:
- Clonezilla
- Rescuezilla
- Every virtual machine image format supported by the
qemu-nbdutility. Eg,- VirtualBox’s VDI
- VMWare’s VMDK
- Qemu’s QCOW2
- Hyper-V's VHDx
- raw .dd/.img
- ...and more!
- Redo Rescue
- Foxclone
- FOG Project (still in-development: only supports Windows MBR/GPT disks due to FOG Project's more advanced image manipulation)
- FSArchiver (restore only, not explore)
- Apart GTK
- Redo Backup and Recovery (v0.9.2 format, v0.9.3-v1.0.4 format and the old community updates)
Bug advisories
Rescuezilla is thoroughly tested using Windows, Linux, and Mac environments. The following are known bugs in v2.3.1. Please regularly consult the following table (and the links below the table) in case new bugs are discovered.
| Severity | Tracking # | Description | Fixed in release |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very High | #328 | A user reported a Rescuezilla backup took only a few seconds for 40GB of data and reported success. When I looked into it, the partclone utility claimed to successfully backup an NTFS partition even though it clearly failed. User reported this problem occurs on Clonezilla too (which uses a very recent version of partclone)
| |
| High | #254 | When making a backup of a Windows drive, some users report the error "Windows is hibernated, refused to mount" or "Error: read-only file system" and a failed backup. This is usually due to Windows' hibernate feature, with widely used workaround to select 'Restart' (not shutdown) from the Windows Start Menu before booting the Rescuezilla USB stick. But some users are reporting even after doing a full restart the problem is now persisting, with the only workaround for these users to disable hibernation entirely (which is definitely not a good solution). This issue is being investigated as part of task #254 | |
| Low | #168 | Rescuezilla uses the version of partclone that’s available in the official Ubuntu repositories, so handling of the uncommon Btrfs filesystem is worse than Clonezilla which uses a more recent partclone version compiled from source. This only matters if you use a Btrfs filesystems using more recent features like "zstd transparent compression", which even many Btrfs filesystem users will not be using. A future version will compile partclone from source like Clonezilla rather than using the older Ubuntu repository versions. |
There may be other bugs listed on the Rescuezilla v2.4 development page. If you encounter any additional bugs, please report them (ideally with logs) on the GitHub issues page (after searching for duplicate issues).
Checksums
sha256sum:
200e8520401ef5a5efb78ef87c9fa3d3faed6c2073711f42354612ae9fbdb205 rescuezilla-2.3.1-48-g3483a049-64bit.impish.iso
sha1sum:
224df6b400f3848157b11c45bf4f4a7cd6027fd7 rescuezilla-2.3.1-48-g3483a049-64bit.impish.iso
md5sum:
51492ac50b7d43b5126754269cb8fa87 rescuezilla-2.3.1-48-g3483a049-64bit.impish.iso
Discussion and User Support
If you need support, start by checking the frequently asked questions, then proceed to the Rescuezilla forum.
Reviews and Testimonials
You can read reviews of Rescuezilla on AlternativeTo. Please consider joining AlternativeTo and giving the project a like -- as of writing, Rescuezilla has 118 likes compared to Clonezilla's 436 likes, so fewer people are discovering Rescuezilla.