4.2. Preparing USB Boot Media
|
Data Loss |
This procedure destroys data on the media.
Back up
any important information before you begin. Some models of USB media use
additional partitions or software to provide functions such as
encryption. This procedure may make it difficult or impossible to access
these special areas on your boot media.
|
The images/diskboot.img
file on the first Fedora Core
installation disc is a boot image designed for USB media. This file also
appears on FTP and Web sites providing Fedora Core.
Several software utilities are available for Windows and Linux that can
write image files to a device. Linux includes the dd
command for this purpose.
The dd
utility requires you to specify the
device file that corresponds to the physical media. The name of
the device file matches the name assigned to the device by your
system. All device files appear in the directory
/dev/
. For example,
/dev/sda
denotes the first USB, SATA, or SCSI
device that is attached to the system.
To learn the name that your system assigns to the media:
-
Open a terminal window. On a Fedora system, choose
→
→
to start a
terminal.
-
Attach or insert the media.
-
In the terminal window, type the following command:
dmesg
Look for the items in the dmesg
output that relate
to the detection of a new SCSI device. Linux systems treat USB media
as SCSI devices.
|
Using the Device Mapper |
On Fedora Core 5 and later systems, it may be easier to find the
right device name by examining the /dev/disk/ directory. Use the
command ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ to see the
disk devices collated by model and device name.
|
-
Unmount the media. On a Fedora system, right-click the icon that
corresponds to the media, and select
. Alternatively, enter this command in a
terminal window:
umount /dev/
<device>
Replace
<device>
with the
name of the correct device file for the media.
To write an image file to boot media with dd
on a
current version of Fedora Core, carry out the following steps:
-
Locate the image file.
-
Attach or insert the media.
-
Your system may automatically detect and open the media. If that
happens, close or unmount the media before continuing.
-
Open a terminal window.
-
In the terminal window, type the following command:
dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/
<device>
Replace
<device>
with the
name of the correct device file for the media.