To prepare the USB stick, you will need a system where GNU/Linux is
already running and where USB is supported. With current GNU/Linux systems
the USB stick should be automatically recognized when you insert it. If
it is not you should check that the usb-storage kernel module is loaded.
When the USB stick is inserted, it will be mapped to a device named
/dev/sdX
, where the “X” is a letter
in the range a-z. You should be able to see to which device the USB
stick was mapped by running the command dmesg after
inserting it. To write to your stick, you may have to turn off its write
protection switch.
Warning | |
---|---|
The procedures described in this section will destroy anything already on the device! Make very sure that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. If you use the wrong device the result could be that all information on for example a hard disk could be lost. |
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
Information about how to do this on other operating systems can be found in the Debian CD FAQ.
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.
An alternative way to set up your USB stick is to manually copy the installer files, and also a CD image to it. Note that the USB stick should be at least 1 GB in size (smaller setups are possible if you follow Section 4.3.3, “Manually copying files to the USB stick — the flexible way”).
There is an all-in-one file hd-media/boot.img.gz
which contains all the installer files (including the kernel)
.
Note that, although convenient, this method does have one major disadvantage: the logical size of the device will be limited to 1 GB, even if the capacity of the USB stick is larger. You will need to repartition the USB stick and create new file systems to get its full capacity back if you ever want to use it for some different purpose.
After that, mount the USB memory stick
which will now have
on it, and copy a Debian ISO image (netinst or full CD) to it.
Unmount the stick (umount /mnt
) and you are done.
If you like more flexibility or just want to know what's going on, you should use the following method to put the files on your stick. One advantage of using this method is that — if the capacity of your USB stick is large enough — you have the option of copying any ISO image, even a DVD image, to it.