Using chroot for Linux system recovery | Hugonweb Annotated Link Bibliography

This technique lets you boot your broken installation with a live USB disc, then use chroot to switch the running Linux over to the broken installation. You can then run package manager commands, etc.

arch-chroot is a script that does all of the steps for you and is even available on Debian.

systemd-nspawn can be used in a similar way:

systemd-nspawn --directory /tmp/target-rescue --boot -- --unit rescue.target

It is usually used as a light weight host virtualization technique, and is new to me!