How to make a USB stick use ISO image file in debian

Posted 2021-01-11 mouseleo

4.3.1. Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image

Debian CD and DVD images can now be written directly to a USB stick, which is a very easy way to make a bootable USB stick. Simply choose a CD or DVD image (such as the netinst, CD-1, DVD-1, or netboot) that will fit on your USB stick. See Section 4.1, “Official Debian GNU/Linux CD/DVD-ROM Sets” to get a CD or DVD image.

Alternatively, for very small USB sticks, only a few megabytes in size, you can download the mini.iso image from the netboot directory (at the location mentioned in Section 4.2.1, “Where to Find Installation Images”).

The CD or DVD image you choose should be written directly to the USB stick, overwriting its current contents. For example, when using an existing GNU/Linux system, the CD or DVD image file can be written to a USB stick as follows, after having made sure that the stick is unmounted:

# cp debian.iso /dev/sdX
# sync

The win32diskimager utility can be used under other operating systems to copy the image.

	Important
	The image must be written to the whole-disk device and not a partition, e.g. /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1. Do not use tools like unetbootin which alter the image.

	Important
	Simply writing the CD or DVD image to USB like this should work fine for most users. The other options below are more complex, mainly for people with specialised needs.

The hybrid image on the stick does not occupy all the storage space, so it may be worth considering using the free space to hold firmware files or packages or any other files of your choice. This could be useful if you have only one stick or just want to keep everything you need on one device.

Create a second, FAT partition on the stick, mount the partition and copy or unpack the firmware onto it. For example:

# mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt
# cd /mnt
# tar zxvf /path/to/firmware.tar.gz
# cd /
# umount /mnt

 

You might have written the mini.iso to the USB stick. In this case the second partition doesn‘t have to be created as, very nicely, it will already be present. Unplugging and replugging the USB stick should make the two partitions visible.