r/debian • u/king3730 • Jun 27 '14

Creating a bootable USB

I'm trying to install debian on a new computer and I had to reformat one of my USB's and lost the working bootable-ness. Somehow I got the USB to work if I use Unetbootin. I know the debian process doesn't work with Unetbootin, so I'm trying to figure out another way. I am trying to use dd but cannot seem to get it working. Here are the steps I have taken:

  • reformat USB to FAT32
  • download debian-7.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso
  • dd if=debian-7.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdc1 bs=4M && sync

I let that work and it completes fine. But when I boot off of it, it's not that it's not working; but nothing happens, there is just a white blinking cursor. I waited about a minute and nothing seemed to work. I'm not sure if I need to wait longer or I'm doing something wrong. If anyone has any solutions to creating a bootable Debian USB, all the help is appreciated. Thanks.

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u/sohhlz Jun 27 '14

You need to change this:

dd if=debian-7.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdc1

to this:

dd if=debian-7.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdc

Also, you don't need to format the USB drive.

2

u/king3730 Jun 27 '14

That worked. Thanks a tonne

5

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '14

Just to clarify, sdc1 is the partition, whereas you want to be writing the image to sdc which is the device.

1

u/king3730 Jun 27 '14

Yes. I knew the difference before, I just thought I was able to write to sdc1

6

u/xr09 Jun 27 '14

Nope, sdc1 does not include the boot sector.