Make Linux ISO as USB installer

Published on February 15, 2013 in Linux. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

This is just a small note to myself.. It’s pretty much stolen from crunchbang-wiki

Find the USB-drive (nice if you have more than 1 HDD in your computer / laptop, as I do)

sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*

Outputs something like:

[M00kaw@localhost ~]$ sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root  9 Feb 15 18:53 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_0019E06B0793F980F77109BB-0:0 -> ../../sdc
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Feb 15 18:53 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_0019E06B0793F980F77109BB-0:0-part1 -> ../../sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Feb 15 18:53 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_0019E06B0793F980F77109BB-0:0-part2 -> ../../sdc2
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Feb 15 18:53 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DataTraveler_2.0_0019E06B0793F980F77109BB-0:0-part3 -> ../../sdc3
[M00kaw@localhost ~]$

Copy the ISO to the USB:

sudo dd if=/path/to/Linux/Linux-file.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M;sync

replace sdX with sdb (note: NO sdb1 or sdb2 etc.!)

1 Response to “Make Linux ISO as USB installer”

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  • Patrick Kerwood
    March 11, 2013 at 19:34

    If you want to see a progress bar, when copying the image file to the device, use the program “dcfldd”. Its an enhanced version of dd and its all most sure that its in your repos, what ever distro your using.

    The only downside i found using it is, if you use the argument “bs=4MB” the progress bar will not show.

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