Burn CD-ROM image to USB flash stick

In article ,
Dave Farrance wrote:

I often find it useful to burn a bootable CD-ROM image to a USB flash
stick so that it appears just like an external bootable CD-ROM.

Easy enough on Windows: http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p6

So when I create a GRUB rescue CD image, for example, I have to reboot
into Windows to burn it to flash, which is a bit pathetic.

But it'd be nice to do that with Linux. Anybody got any ideas?

And no, those utilities will not run on Wine.

If you want to retain the USB stick's existing partition structure:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>1

or if you really do want to make it partitionless CD-like:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>

Read the output of "dmesg" after plugging the stick in, to see what
sd<whatever> should be.

Nick
Serendipity: http://www.leverton.org/blosxom (last update 29th March 2010)
"The Internet, a sort of ersatz counterfeit of real life"

Nick Leverton wrote:

Dave Farrance wrote:

I often find it useful to burn a bootable CD-ROM image to a USB flash
stick so that it appears just like an external bootable CD-ROM.
Easy enough on Windows: http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p6

If you want to retain the USB stick's existing partition structure:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>1

Leaving it with a hard-disk-like partition structure, but there's no CD
"type" that can be assigned to the partition so can't be made to work.

or if you really do want to make it partitionless CD-like:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>

I've tried that and although it can then be mounted as a Linux drive, the
BIOS doesn't see it, so it's no good as a bootable drive.

Read the output of "dmesg" after plugging the stick in, to see what
sd<whatever> should be.

The Windows "UFDisk Utility" can make it bootable alright, and the flash
key then appears in Linux as /dev/sr0, but as a read-only device.

The Windows utilities do something that I can't duplicate in Linux.

Dave Farrance wrote:

Nick Leverton wrote:

Dave Farrance wrote:

I often find it useful to burn a bootable CD-ROM image to a USB flash
stick so that it appears just like an external bootable CD-ROM.
Easy enough on Windows: http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p6

If you want to retain the USB stick's existing partition structure:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>1

Leaving it with a hard-disk-like partition structure, but there's no CD
"type" that can be assigned to the partition so can't be made to work.

or if you really do want to make it partitionless CD-like:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/sd<whatever>

I've tried that and although it can then be mounted as a Linux drive, the
BIOS doesn't see it, so it's no good as a bootable drive.

Read the output of "dmesg" after plugging the stick in, to see what
sd<whatever> should be.

The Windows "UFDisk Utility" can make it bootable alright, and the flash
key then appears in Linux as /dev/sr0, but as a read-only device.

The Windows utilities do something that I can't duplicate in Linux.

unetbootin or usb-creator-gtk are worth a try - sometimes one works,
sometimes the other - not sure whether it is stick or distro dependent.

Cheers

Colin


-
Colin Brough
(Replace .invalid with .co.uk to reply)

Colin Brough wrote:

Dave Farrance wrote:

I often find it useful to burn a bootable CD-ROM image to a USB flash
stick so that it appears just like an external bootable CD-ROM.
Easy enough on Windows: http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p6

unetbootin or usb-creator-gtk are worth a try - sometimes one works,
sometimes the other - not sure whether it is stick or distro dependent.

Unetbootin worked fine with Linux distro images that I tried. I understand
that it formats the flash stick like a hard disk and that it knows how to
modify most distro images with the insertion of suitable hard-disk style
boot files. I think that usb-creator-gtk works in a similar way.

I haven't found a way to write CD or DVD images directly to flash sticks
under Linux though, as can be done in Windows. So I still have to burn
Grub-rescue flash-sticks in Windows, which is a bit incongruous.

On 2011-09-23, Dave Farrance wrote:

Colin Brough wrote:

Dave Farrance wrote:

I often find it useful to burn a bootable CD-ROM image to a USB flash
stick so that it appears just like an external bootable CD-ROM.
Easy enough on Windows: http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p6

unetbootin or usb-creator-gtk are worth a try - sometimes one works,
sometimes the other - not sure whether it is stick or distro dependent.

Unetbootin worked fine with Linux distro images that I tried. I understand
that it formats the flash stick like a hard disk and that it knows how to
modify most distro images with the insertion of suitable hard-disk style
boot files. I think that usb-creator-gtk works in a similar way.

I haven't found a way to write CD or DVD images directly to flash sticks
under Linux though, as can be done in Windows. So I still have to burn
Grub-rescue flash-sticks in Windows, which is a bit incongruous.

Troll bell sounds, that or you are confused.

Unetbootin, thats a (Linux) iso image and makes the stick bootable. Set you
machine to boot from USB and volia.

Now, I still haer the Troll bell. Unetbootin works for me everytime. Klass
may have started this, but by now it all GUI.

Ms Penguin has just come in and says the Troll bell is ringing. Must go...