From terminal , how make a LIVE USB for all distro's ,not only for Ubuntu? [duplicate]
You can use the famous (and also dangerous) Linux tool dd
for this job. But take note that it will completely erase all the contents of USB drive. Also note that you can't get the facility of persistence storage with the Live USB, which means every boot to the Live System will be new.
Using dd
First take note of the device number of your USB drive with the command sudo blkid
. Most probably, it will be /dev/sdb
or /dev/sdc
. Almost all of the time, it cannot be /dev/sda
.
Then open a terminal with the Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut and use this command (I'm assuming your USB drive is /dev/sdb
).
sudo dd if=/path-to-the-iso-file/filename.iso of=/dev/sdb
The command will run for some time. When you see the prompt $
in your terminal, you're done.
Using cat
You can also use the cat
command. Open a terminal and enter the command like below:
sudo cat /path-to-ubuntu-iso/iso-filename.iso > /dev/sdb; sync
Replace the /dev/sdb
with your system-specific USB drive number.
Please note that you need to specify the output device as /dev/sdb
or /dev/sdc
, not /dev/sdb1
, /dev/sdc1
, etc.
Update for the updated question
Not all distros can be made bootable using the dd
method. One such example is OpenSUSE DVD (not the live one). So it is not possible to use dd
to make a bootable iso for every Linux distro, but the dd
method should work for all live distros.
Yes it can be done with mtools (various) If you have a look at this page, there's instructions for downloading the isotostick.sh script that uses mtools (you need to also install mtools).
A look through that script will give you an idea of what is involved.