Copying ISO Images To USB
The NST distribution is based off of Fedora. Because of this you can use a variety of methods to install the NST ISO image onto USB media (memory sticks, SD cards, etc).
The following sections provide a quick reference for some common methods for transferring the ISO image to a USB flash drive. What is described below is just the tip of the iceberg. For full details, refer to the man pages for the various utilities used and visit the "How to create and use Live USB" page on the Fedora wiki.
Using liveusb-creator
If you are more comfortable with graphical applications, you can use the liveusb-creator tool. Look for the Fedora LiveUSB Creator launcher icon under system tools. This tool offers a subset of the features provided by the livecd-iso-to-disk command line utility, but is recommended for beginners (or people that don't have time to read and can live with limitations).
There is a version of liveusb-creator available that runs under Windows.
For more details on using the liveusb-creator tool, refer to Fedora's excellent write up: "How to create and use Live USB" .
Using livecd-iso-to-disk
The livecd-iso-to-disk command line utility provides a lot more options than the simplified liveusb-creator tool. The livecd-iso-to-disk utility can be installed on a NST (or any Fedora based system) by running the following command:
sudo rpm -q livecd-tools || sudo yum install livecd-tools
Once installed, you can run use the livecd-iso-to-disk utility in the following manner (there are a lot more options available and you are encouraged to read the man page).
sudo livecd-iso-to-disk --noverify nst-20-5102.i686.iso /dev/sdx1
NOTE: You will need to substitute the name of the ISO file to use (nst-20-5102.i686.iso) and the USB disk partition to install to (/dev/sdx1) according to your situation.
The following example formats the USB drive and enables EFI/UEFI booting of your USB drive with a 64 bit version of the NST ISO image (for newer Intel hardware and Macs).
sudo livecd-iso-to-disk --format --efi --noverify nst-20-6480.x86_64.iso /dev/sdx1
If you booted from a DVD ISO image, it is possible to create USB media using from the DVD you have booted from. Substitute /run/initramfs/livedev for the name of the ISO file to use (you may also need to include the --noverify option as we aren't sure verification works when reading from raw devices). Here is an example:
sudo livecd-iso-to-disk --noverify /run/initramfs/livedev /dev/sdx1
You will need to change /dev/sdx1 shown above to the partition of your USB flash drive you want initialized. Add the --format and --reset-mbr options if you need to clear/initialize your USB flash drive to a good working state.
For more details on using the livecd-iso-to-disk tool, refer to Fedora's excellent write up: "How to create and use Live USB" .
Directly Copying ISO Image To USB
One of the simplest methods to convert a ISO image to bootable USB is to directly copy the image to the USB media. The dd command can be used for this purpose on Linux and Mac based systems.
Here are some things to be aware of when using the dd method:
- The entire USB flash drive is used. Hence, if you use a 16GB flash drive, you won't be able to store information on any of the remaining disk space.
- The systems which you want to boot from need to support booting from USB ISO images in addition to or instead of booting from USB FAT images. This may lead to better or worse compatibility.
- You will not have access to all of the fancy features available when using the Live USB tools (separate writable home partition, overlay, etc).
Using dd or 'dcfldd' - Linux System
The following demonstrates how to use dd on a Linux system to copy the contents of the ISO image to a 8GB USB flash drive ("/dev/sdc") from the command line. An 8GB Block Size ("BS") was used for file transfer optimization. Make sure the USB flash drive is not mounted prior to performing the copy. The cmp utility is used after the copy for verification.
[root@vortex ~]# lsscsi -s [0:0:0:0] disk ATA Kingston SSDNow 8C1Q /dev/sda 64.0GB [1:0:0:0] disk ATA KINGSTON SA400S3 0009 /dev/sdb 120GB [3:0:0:0] cd/dvd HP DVD Writer 1270d GH23 /dev/sr0 1.07GB [4:0:0:0] disk Corsair Voyager GT 3.0 1.00 /dev/sdc 64.0GB [root@vortex livecd]# [root@vortex livecd]# ls -al nst-40.x86_64.iso -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5264179200 Jul 11 17:16 nst-40.x86_64.iso [root@vortex livecd]# [root@vortex livecd]# dcfldd if=./nst-40.x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=8M statusinterval=64; 512 blocks (4096Mb) written. 571+1 records in 571+1 records out [root@vortex livecd]# [root@vortex livecd]# sync;sync; [root@vortex livecd]#
[root@shopper2 Downloads]# ls -al ./nst-20-5102.x86_64.iso -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2002780160 Dec 2 06:21 ./nst-20-5102.x86_64.iso [root@shopper2 Downloads]# [root@shopper2 Downloads]# lsscsi -s [0:0:0:0] disk ATA OCZ-VERTEX3 2.25 /dev/sda 120GB [1:0:0:0] disk ATA SanDisk SDSSDX24 R211 /dev/sdb 240GB [12:0:0:0] disk SanDisk Cruzer 1.01 /dev/sdc 8.00GB [root@shopper2 Downloads]# [root@shopper2 Downloads]# dd if=./nst-20-5102.x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=8M 238+1 records in 238+1 records out 2002780160 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 519.832 s, 3.9 MB/s [root@shopper2 Downloads]# [root@shopper2 Downloads]# cmp -l ./nst-20-5102.x86_64.iso /dev/sdc cmp: EOF on ./nst-20-5102.x86_64.iso [root@shopper2 Downloads]#
SD Card Issues
We have seen issues when trying to use SD cards on some systems. When SD cards are working correctly, you will typically see a /dev/mmcblk0 device appear after inserting the card. If you don't see this device, check the output of dmesg:
[nst@refritos Downloads]$ sudo dmesg | tail [73111.146616] CPU3: Package temperature/speed normal [73111.146617] CPU4: Package temperature/speed normal [73111.146618] CPU0: Package temperature/speed normal [78944.735796] lenovo 0005:17EF:6048.0006: unknown main item tag 0x0 [78944.736422] input: ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint [78944.737291] lenovo 0005:17EF:6048.0006: input,hidraw1: BLUETOOTH HID v3.12 Keyboard [ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint] on 00:c2:c6:e9:c3:bf [79106.142226] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.310011] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.472897] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.666591] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [nst@refritos Downloads]$
The mmc0 errors indicate that the system recognized that a SD card was inserted, but did not know how to handle it. If your SD card reader is connected to the PCI bus, the following command can be used to verify that the reader was detected:
[nst@refritos Downloads]$ lspci | grep -i sd 02:00.0 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. SD/MMC Card Reader Controller (rev 01) 3d:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM961/PM961 [nst@refritos Downloads]$
At this point, you can try loading two kernel modules and then re-insert the card:
[nst@refritos Downloads]$ sudo modprobe tifm_sd [nst@refritos Downloads]$ sudo modprobe mmc_block [nst@refritos Downloads]$
After re-inserting the card, check your dmesg output and verify that at least the /dev/mmcblk0 appears as a device. There may be additional mmc devices entries for each partition (below we see two partitions) and if you have more than one SD card inserted your index may be something other than 0.
[nst@refritos Downloads]$ sudo dmesg | tail [78944.736422] input: ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1 [78944.737291] lenovo 0005:17EF:6048.0006: input,hidraw1: BLUETOOTH HID v3.12 Keyboard [ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint] on 00:c2:c6:e9:c3:bf [79106.142226] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.310011] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.472897] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79106.666591] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card [79290.022431] mmc0: Tuning timeout, falling back to fixed sampling clock [79290.024275] mmc0: new ultra high speed SDR104 SDHC card at address 0007 [79290.024840] mmcblk0: mmc0:0007 SD16G 14.6 GiB [79290.028134] mmcblk0: p1 p2 [nst@refritos Downloads]$ ls /dev/mmc* /dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk0p1 /dev/mmcblk0p2 [nst@refritos Downloads]$
At this point dd command can then be used to write a disk image to the SD card. In the example below, we are writing a disk image for a Raspberry PI by streaming the output of the unzip command directly into dd (leaving the Raspberry PI image in its compressed state). Also, notice how the ddstatus alias was created. I typically have this line in my ~/.bashrc file as it sets the block size and indicates that I want progress displayed on stderr.
[nst@refritos Downloads]$ unzip -l 2018-06-27-raspbian-stretch.zip Archive: 2018-06-27-raspbian-stretch.zip Length Date Time Name --------- ---------- ----- ---- 4823449600 06-26-2018 21:22 2018-06-27-raspbian-stretch.img --------- ------- 4823449600 1 file [nst@refritos Downloads]$ alias ddstatus='sudo dd bs=4M status=progress' [nst@refritos Downloads]$ unzip -p 2018-06-27-raspbian-stretch.zip 2018-06-27-raspbian-stretch.img | ddstatus of=/dev/mmcblk0 4817616896 bytes (4.8 GB, 4.5 GiB) copied, 249 s, 19.3 MB/s 0+54139 records in 0+54139 records out 4823449600 bytes (4.8 GB, 4.5 GiB) copied, 395.651 s, 12.2 MB/s [nst@refritos Downloads]$
Finally, if you would like the SD card modules loaded at boot, create a module configuration file /etc/modules-load.d/mmc.conf with the following content:
# Load necessary modules access SD cards tifm_sd mmc_block
Using dd - Mac System
It is also possible to use the dd command to copy the contents of the ISO image to a USB flash drive having a capacity of 2GB (or more). The following demonstrates how to do this from the command line on a Mac. The diskutil utility was used prior to invoking the dd command determine the device entry for the USB flash drive and to unmount any active partitions.
taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *512.1 GB disk0 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 511.8 GB disk0s2 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk1 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1 2: Apple_HFS TIMEMAC 749.8 GB disk1s2 /dev/disk3 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *8.0 GB disk3 1: Windows_FAT_32 tldboot 128.0 MB disk3s1 2: Linux 7.9 GB disk3s2 taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3 Unmount of all volumes on disk3 was successful taco-e:tlp pkb$ sudo dd if=/Volumes/public/vm/iso/nst-20-5102.i686.iso of=/dev/disk3 bs=$((8*1024*1024)) 220+1 records in 220+1 records out 1847590912 bytes transferred in 2957.797273 secs (624651 bytes/sec) taco-e:tlp pkb$ diskutil eject /dev/disk3 Disk /dev/disk3 ejected taco-e:tlp pkb$
Direct Write For Windows Systems
If you are on a Windows based system, you will not have access to the dd command. However, there are other methods which allow you to directly write ISO images to USB media. Detailed instructions can be found at Fedora's excellent: "How to create and use Live USB" page.
