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Burn Linux OS to USB/SD from OSX (Terminal)

Jose CerrejonLess than 1 minuteLinuxAppleLinuxApple

Burn Linux OS to USB/SD from OSX (Terminal)

penguin
penguin

Today we'll see a simple way to burn a Linux operating system image, any flavor or variety, in a flash drive or SD card with OSX. If you are interested ...


The steps are quite simple:

  • Download the iso. We are going to call generically ubunarch.iso (lest you dispute)
  • Once downloaded, open the terminal and type the following command:
hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ubunarch.img ubunarch.iso
  • Now let's see where our USB/SD drive are:
diskutil list
  • Unmount the drive (if not unmounted, re-run the command). N is the drive where you want to install the operating system:
sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
  • Now we'll copy the image to the device (replacing N by your drive and ubunarch with the name of your file):
date +'Start: %H:%M:%S' && sudo dd if=ubunarch.img bs=1m
 of=/dev/rdiskN
  • Well done!. Now before removing the drive, unmount it with (keep an eye to N):
diskutil eject /dev/diskN