Bootable Linux USB Drives

 

This blog covers how to create a bootable USB drive to install Linux on a system.
It does NOT cover how to install Linux as a bootable operating system ON A USB DRIVE but rather to load an .iso onto a USB to INSTALL Linux on some computer.

So I got my first server, a used Dell R900 and wanted to load CentOS 7 on it ASAP. I have always known about Linux, I have played with it in VMs, dual-booted it a few times to mess around, but this was when creating CD boot disks was cheaper and more convenient then flash drives (if they couldn't even fit distros on them). I haven't really spent a whole lot of time in it until the last few years. It was either at work or school so it was on equipment where it was already set up.

I was in a rush and I wanted to get it installed so the first thing I did was format my 32gb flash drive and copied the .iso file.

In this case it was the CentOS 7.2 Minimal image. This did not work, wouldn't even boot. I actually expected this to happen but I had to try.

I then extracted the .iso and copied all the files to the root of the flash drive. This time it almost boot but I was left with the error:

"Isolinux.bin missing or corrupt"

I Google'd this and pretty much everybody said "Yea this is what happens when you don't create an install disk/drive correctly."

So, I did some research and looked for some utilities that could do this quickly for me because I did not feel like doing this via cli at the time.

I tried iso2usb, dd for Windows, Win32DiskImager, and Universal-USB-Installer. ALL of these tools failed. Some of them would partition the drive only to the size of the file and when booted it would fail and "Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue." leaving me with the "dracut:/#" return prompt. The others either had same behavior or didn't boot at all.

I then came across this application called Rufus with the slogan "Create bootable USB drives the easy way".

Let me tell you, this guy was right. First try it worked and I got it up and running.

So if you want to install Linux on some laptop, PC, or server then trust me. Use this application, it works great and its super easy to use.

It will be in my Tools folder from now on.

Download it here: https://rufus.akeo.ie/