Make bootable USB stick
To make a bootable USB stick of a Linux distro:
- Download an ISO image of your preferred Linux distro
- Insert the USB key and unmount it
- Copy IMG to USB key using
dd
(see instructions below)
Using dd
on Linux
Find out the name of your USB drive with lsblk
. Make sure that it is not mounted.
lsblk
Run the following command, replacing /dev/sdx
with your drive,
e.g. /dev/sdb
. (Do NOT append a partition number, so do NOT use
something like /dev/sdb1)
sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress && sync
Wait for the command sync to complete before unplugging the USB drive to ensure the data was written completely.
See Core utilities#dd and the ArchLinux Wiki for more information.
Using dd
on OSX
# get the device name on OSX diskutil list # use the appropriate device name; do not use partition!!! sudo dd if=file.img of=/dev/sdc bs=4M
Stack Exchange and Tinned Software propose a different solution for
OSX in which the ISO image is first converted to a DMG using
hdiutils
.