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I'm having trouble figuring out how I would write an ISO disk image to a USB flash memory device from the command line in Ubuntu. I have the Startup Disk Creator utility, but I need to be able to script this job.

I found the usb-creator package, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation and python -m usbcreator gives usbcreator is a package and cannot be directly executed.

I looked at unetbootin, but it seems like another GUI-only utility.

Is there some obvious solution which I'm overlooking?

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Are you even sure if the ISO image will work on a USB device? Some ISOs which will boot if they are on a CD/DVD will not actually boot from a USB device.

Assuming the ISO you want has has a bootloader that will work, then it should be as simple as dd if=filename.iso of=/dev/usbdevice but this will replace anything that is currently on the USB disk.

If you wanted to place the ISO onto an existing filesystem on the USB drive and boot it, then setting it up may be a lot more complicated.

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Nope, this is perfect; exactly what I needed. Thanks! – mikepurvis Jul 27 '11 at 19:23
Ack... not quite. This method loads the filesystem, but it doesn't seem to make the drive bootable the Startup Disk Creator tool does (with the same ISO). – mikepurvis Aug 1 '11 at 17:21
As I mentioned it does somewhat depend on what boot-loader is present on the ISO and how it is configured. Some images will work just by doing a dd, others will not. For example a Debian Live will work fine by using the dd method. To be sure you can try it, or read the docs for whatever iso you are talking about to see if it is supported. – Zoredache Aug 1 '11 at 17:26
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up vote 1 down vote

I know you can do this in UNetbootin gui. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks like you can do it by command-line, as well:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/unetbootin/wiki/commands

unetbootin method=diskimage isofile="my.iso" installtype=USB targetdrive=/dev/sdc1

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^ the answer I was going to give. unetbootin automagically handles the necessary steps for moving most ISO files to USB media. – MikeyB Jul 27 '11 at 1:19
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