Using Hetzner Rescue

February 5, 2026

system-administration hetzner

As of this writing, the Hetzner Rescue Image is based on Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye).

Online Documentation

Hints

There are several things I forget about in the rescue image. Most of them can be seen by running:

root@rescue ~ # history
1 installimage -r yes -l 1 -i images/Debian-bullseye-latest-amd64-base.tar.gz -n myhost.example.org -p swap:swap:4G,/:ext4:20G #-a
2 installimage -r yes -l 1 -i images/Debian-bullseye-latest-amd64-base.tar.gz -n myhost.example.org -p /boot:ext3:512M,lvm:vg0:all -v vg0:root:/:ext4:20G,vg0:swap:swap:swap:4G #-a
3 installimage -c configs/test #-a
4 installimage -c configs/standard #-a
5 installimage -h
6 installimage
7 chroot-prepare /mnt ; chroot /mnt
8 mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
9 mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
10 mount /dev/md2 /mnt
11 mount /dev/vg0/root /mnt
12 update_bios
13 update_disks
14 openzfs_install
15 speedtest

From here, doing things like updating the BIOS and disks may be worthwhile.