The only working PC I have is a 32-bit x86 and has a minimal Debian installation. I need to flash a USB with an ISO file from it to make a live system. I tried for a few days to get flathub or appimage working there, but just can’t. I decided an apt package would be the easiest course of action, but neither Rufus, Impress or BalenaEtcher seem to be available in default repos. It there a program that is there? A bare .elf executable with no packaging would also be fine.
Other people have obviously pointed it out, but this is one of the many areas in Linux where the command line is so much easier than an interface that the people who write GUI tools just don’t bother. The tool you need for a command line approach is called dd (I imagine it stands for direct data because that is what it does). Using dd you can take data from one place and put it into another. This means you can put zeros all over a drive, wiping it in full, using
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/targetdeviceThat will fill the whole drive with zeroes, but you could also do it with random noise first, using the below
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/targetdeviceIn the case of your ISO image there is someone who has included all the options including block size and so on, but the step you really need is to be sure you get the right device. Execuse the command below
ls /devThen insert your device, wait a few seconds, and run it again. You will have a list of all of the devices that were connected before and after plugging your drive in, so your drive will be the new one. It will probably show up as something like
/dev/sdc /dev/sdc1Notice that there are two. The first is the device, the second is the partition on the device. If you tried to put the content of an ISO image into an existing partition it would look like it had all worked but it would actually fail because the ISO is a full rip of a device, not a partition. Instead use the device itself, in this case sdc.
dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M; syncThe last bit will make your system write things to the disk and make it safe to eject it. Once that is all done it should work as a bootable USB.
It seems super complex but once you have done it a few times it becomes so easy you will regret the time spent getting a GUI installed.
If you still want a GUI you could try Gnome Disks, but I never enjoyed using it.
Scrolled a while and didn’t see it:
dd if=image.iso of=/dev/yourstick bs=4M ; sync
And what is yourstick? lsblk and determine by size. Use the device node, not a partition, e.g. /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1.
Balena Etcher has a .deb file on their GitHub releases.
https://github.com/balena-io/etcher#debian-and-ubuntu-based-package-repository-gnulinux-x86x64
Should be able to just download and double click it, on Debian.
Ventoy can handle multiple images on the same device
Does Ventoy still have a blob problem?
+1 for Ventoy. For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, the Ventoy utility sets up a USB key with a small bootable partition, then fills the rest with an exFAT partition where you can drop your ISOs. Booting from the stick just gives you a list of bootable images to choose from.
It’s bloody magic. Super convenient, and tellingly the last iso I ever “burned” - now it’s all simple file copy operations from any device. 😎👌
I always had to look up how to use the dd command until a few years back I saw somewhere that you can literally just use cp and the results won’t be worse in any way.
cp image.iso /dev/sdXWon’t this break if the flash drive isn’t marked as bootable?
there’s no fucking way
This works. You can also cat image.iso >/dev/sdx
I always laugh at windows users with their external random apps to do something elementary
You sure it wasn’t
cat?I know you can use a root shell with
cat image.ISO > /dev/[...]for disk images/ISO in disk image Format (so most ISO that aren’t Windows) but using thecpcommand would be news for me.Hmm, cp has smart block size handling & co (unlike dd) but
catis just a stream and pipe & redirect also buffer. Advantage of cp is, you can just sudo it.Cat too. It works largely the same way
cpdoes indeed work too!I am 100% certain, I’ve done this many times over the past few years.
Real LPT in the comments.
Balena Etcher. Just because no-one else has mentioned it in the comments so far.
It was mentioned in the post. Doesn’t seem to be in apt.
dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=64M status=progress
Oops hit the wrong key, main drive formatted
It’s called “disk destroyer” for a reason.
Always double check your dd commands folks.
Nah… If you use
of=/dev/sdait won’t touch your main drive \sIt freaks me out, but these days with nvme disks this is actually true
Lessons for Newbs right here folks
Safer with bs=4M on older flash.
Thanks, seems it worked. It should be noted that
/dev/over normal/run/media/path can be found withlsblkcommand, out of 2 with identical letter use latter with digit
mkusb is a simple bash script around dd to make things easier. I always have it installed on my laptop, in my ~/bin/.
I typically just ‘dd’
The ones that come to my mind that you can install from APT are:
- gnome-disk-utility
- isoimagewriter
As others have said,
ddwill work, or if you really want, you can download the x86 Linux AppImage file from Balena’s website, extract it, then just run it (you may need to mark it as executable first). Should work just fine, and it’ll give you the same GUI as alwaysYou should be able to use dd to create bootable device. Ubuntu has a guide, just replace their iso with yours: scroll all the way down to Using the Linux command line
you should be able to create bootable flash drives with dd
Have you tried Raspberry Pi Imager or popsicle?
DD?
Worse tool for the job. cp, cat, pv, are better.
