Also rescue tips and tricks as that's always interesting.
I have been using a Debian installer USB as I had it to hand (DVD image IIRC) but if I boot into a shell without mounting another root FS the number of utilities is quite limited (just busybox basics). For example just now I wanted gzip but it only had gunzip...
I feel like a shell started from the installer USB should have access to a lot more utilities because the files are there on the disk!
Does anyone know a way to set up a kind of USB like the debian installer where you can install packages from the installer into the live environment?
I've just got Arch Linux installed on a USB drive. I set it up so it works with both UEFI and legacy BIOS boot. It works great - I can install whatever tools I need on it, I can even use it as a little portable Linux drive if I need that. I've also used it to install Arch on a number of my computers.
The only issue is that the USB drive is pretty slow, so it's not the best experience using it