Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] [OT] Making a bootable USB flash drive from ISO image
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 21:11:38
Message-Id: m0kf17$teo$1@ger.gmane.org
1 In order to test some stuff, I needed to install Xubuntu in one of the
2 hard drive partitions on a 5-6 year old generic tower machine.
3
4 I downloaded the Xubuntu 14.04.1 AMD64 ISO, which at 935MB no longer
5 fits on a single CD. So I burned a DVD+R. It failed to boot. The
6 drive in which I burned it is rather suspect, so I tossed the DVD and
7 changed tack: I've got a couple 4+ GB USB flash drives laying on my
8 desk, so I decided to try making a bootable USB flash drive.
9
10 Google pointed me to various sets of instructions which seemed to
11 either involve either
12
13 1) Mounting the ISO image, copying files around, downloading various
14 other bits, and just a lot of faffing around in general.
15
16 2) Installing something like unetbootin (which presumably automates
17 all the faffing) which then requires installing a bunch of other
18 stuff (including Qt).
19
20 But, I found one blog post which said that just using 'dd' to copy an
21 ISO image to the USB flash drive usually "just worked".
22
23 So I dd'ed the 935MB ISO image to the flash drive and plugged it into
24 the target machine, hit the reset button, hit F11 for the boot menu,
25 picked the USB flash drive from the list, and Bob's your uncle: it
26 booted and installed just fine.
27
28 What I'm wondering is why all the blog posts, wiki pages, and HOWTOs
29 showing either the complicated command-line procedures or
30 dependency-heavy "USB creator" apps? (Many of them quite recent.)
31
32 Did this work because the Xubuntu people do something special when
33 creating the ISO image? (If so, then they have my thanks!)
34
35 Is what I thought was a plain vanilla ASROCK/Nvidia AM2+ motherboard
36 BIOS something special? (It's an AMI BIOS dated 2009, so it's nothing
37 particularly recent.)
38
39 --
40 Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Let me do my TRIBUTE
41 at to FISHNET STOCKINGS ...
42 gmail.com

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Making a bootable USB flash drive from ISO image Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>