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 Avsnitt 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 Avsnitt 4.2.1, ”Var man får tag på installationsavbildningar”).

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.

	Viktigt
	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.

	Viktigt
	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 /sökväg/till/fast-programvara.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 Avsnitt 4.3.3, ”Manually copying files to the USB stick — the flexible way”).

Det finns en allt-i-ett-fil kallad hd-media/boot.img.gz som innehåller alla installationsprogrammets filer (inklusive kärnan) .

Observera att, även om det är bekvämt, denna metod har en stor nackdel: den logiska storleken för enheten kommer att vara begränsad till 1 GB, även om kapaciteten för USB-minnet är större. Du kommer att behöva partitionera om USB-minnet och skapa nya filsystem för att få dess fullständiga kapacitet tillbaka om du någon gång vill använda det för andra ändamål.

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.