Tag: iso-to-usb - Unix Tutorial

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.35.04.png

I have decided to try using Dell XPS 13 laptop in addition to my MacBook Pro 15. It is not a coincident that Dell XPS 13 – I have been researching it for a while – is one of the best laptops available for Linux these days, Dell even sells Ubuntu-only version of it.

I got the Windows 10 version of the laptop, but think it’s easy enough to install Linux Mint for dual boot. I’ll be installing using USB disk or microSD card, so Etcher seemed like the perfect tool for it.

Download OS ISO image

I found Linux Mint 19.1 image and downloaded it from the local mirror:

greys@maverick:/Volume/Stuff/dist/ISOs $ wget http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/19.1/linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
--2019-02-21 22:11:47-- http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/19.1/linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
Resolving ftp.heanet.ie... 193.1.193.64
Connecting to ftp.heanet.ie|193.1.193.64|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1973911552 (1.8G) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso’

linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso 100%[=======================================================================>] 1.84G 8.37MB/s in 4m 22s

2019-02-21 22:16:14 (7.18 MB/s) - ‘linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso’ saved [1973911552/1973911552]

Now that image is downloaded, let’s verify it’s valid – follow the Linux Mint – Verify ISO instructions. instructions.

First, we download a cleartext file with the md5 checksum:

greys@maverick:/Volume/Stuff/dist/ISOs $ wget https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/linuxmint.com/stable/19.1/sha256sum.txt
--2019-02-21 22:17:24-- https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/linuxmint.com/stable/19.1/sha256sum.txt
Resolving ftp.heanet.ie... 193.1.193.64
Connecting to ftp.heanet.ie|193.1.193.64|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 584 [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘sha256sum.txt’

sha256sum.txt 100%[=======================================================================>] 584 --.-KB/s in 0s

2019-02-21 22:17:25 (5.86 MB/s) - ‘sha256sum.txt’ saved [584/584]

Here’s how it looks:

greys@maverick:/Volume/Stuff/dist/ISOs $ cat sha256sum.txt
b580052c4652ac8f1cbcd9057a0395642a722707d17e1a77844ff7fb4db36b70 *linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-32bit.iso
bb4b3ad584f2fec1d91ad60fe57ad4044e5c0934a5e3d229da129c9513862eb0 *linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
ca86885e2384373f8fbb2121e2abb6298674e37fc206d3f23661ab5f1f523aba *linuxmint-19.1-mate-32bit.iso
5bc212d73800007c7c3605f03c9d5988ad99f1be9fc91024049ea4b638c33bb4 *linuxmint-19.1-mate-64bit.iso
039d619935c2993e589705e49068a6fa4dc4f9a5eb82470bc7998c9626259416 *linuxmint-19.1-xfce-32bit.iso
7b53b29a34cfef4ddfe24dac27ee321c289dc2ed8b0c1361666bbee0f6ffa9f4 *linuxmint-19.1-xfce-64bit.iso

We can now use the standard file checksum technique. The result of shasum command will be a checksum, and it must match the one found in the sha256sum.txt file exactly. As you can see, it does:

greys@maverick:/Volume/Stuff/dist/ISOs $ shasum -a 256 linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
bb4b3ad584f2fec1d91ad60fe57ad4044e5c0934a5e3d229da129c9513862eb0 linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso

All seems to be correct, so let’s start Etcher and burn the ISO image.

IMPORTANT: please remember that Etcher is perfect for Linux and Unix-like operating systems, but not so good for Windows ISOs. The tool should warn you if you attempt burning Windows ISO. All hope is not lost and work on supporting Windows ISOs is in progress.

We’ll be burning the Linux ISO, so I don’t expect any issues.

Using Etcher to burn ISO image to USB

First, we click the Select image button: Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.32.11.png

… and pick the linuxmint iso image from the list of available ISOs:

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.33.53.png

Next, we click the obvious Select drive button:

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.34.14.png

and simply click the USB flash drive. It’s a 16GB SanDisk in my case:

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.34.27.png

The ISO will be burned in a few minutes:

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.35.04.png

… followed by an even faster USB disk verification process:

Screen Shot 2019-02-21 at 22.37.39.png

and we’re done:

ISO to USB

After a bit more research, I realise now that the following step missing: unlike other operating systems, in MacOS you must convert an ISO image into a different image format, UDRW. If you don’t, your resulting USB stick will not boot (but still have all the valid files).

Convert ISO into bootable image

We convert ISO image into UDRW format using the excellent hdutil command. I only need cd /Volumes/Stuff/dist command because that’s where I keep my ISO images.

In this example, I’m converting a CentOS 7 bootable DVD ISO:

greys@maverick:/ $ cd /Volumes/Stuff/dist 
$ ls -al CentOS*
 -rw-r--r--@ 1 greys staff 4521459712 13 Apr 2018 CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso 
$ hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o centos CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso
 Reading Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)… 
Reading CentOS 7 x86_64 (Apple_ISO : 1)…
 Reading (Type EF : 2)…
 Reading CentOS 7 x86_64 (Apple_ISO : 3…
............................................................. 
Elapsed Time: 10m 15.681s
 Speed: 7.0Mbytes/sec
 Savings: 0.0% created: /Volume/Stuff/dist/centos.dmg
$ ls -al centos.dmg
 -rw-r--r--  1 greys  staff  4520542208  2 Jan 17:54 centos.dmg

Burn image to make bootable USB stick in MacOS

As in the original bootable USB from ISO procedure for Mac, we’ll use dd command:

As you remember, dd command needs 3 parameters for our scenario:

if – specifying the image we’d like to burn
of – specifying the destination device, a USB disk /dev/disk9 in our case
bs – a large enough block size, 1m (means 1 MegaByte)

here’s how we use dd to burn centos.dmg:

$ sudo dd if=./centos.dmg of=/dev/disk9 bs=1m 
4311+1 records in
 4311+1 records out
 4520542208 bytes transferred in 1486.155206 secs (3041770 bytes/sec)

That’s it! The USB stick is ready, you can use it with a VM or physical desktop – it will definitely boot now!

pS: I’ll update the original ISO to bootable USB on Mac page as well.

Bootable USB from ISO with Etcher