I have an iso file I'd like to put on a usb drive and make bootable.

1. Can I just extract the archive to the usb drive, or is there a specific way to put an iso on a usb drive?
2. How do I make the drive bootable after putting the iso files onto it?

Depending on how the iso image was built you *should* be able to simply " dd if=/path/to/your.iso of=/dev/sdX " where /dev/sdX is your USB drive (NB: NOT sdX1 or sdX2, but rather simply sdX).

Maybe someone could answer why this fails with some bootable iso images. I know it works with certain distros install images like grml and Fedora.

To answer 2., you don't need to worry about "making it bootable" as long as the iso image you're using is already bootable by itself. If not, I think you have to remaster the iso.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for replying so quickly. That seems really simple.

Just so I learn something from this, what is dd? Is it a utility of its own with 'if' being the source and 'of' being the destination, and a bunch of other commands, or is dd a command from a utility?

man dd

I guess "utility of its own" would be an apt description.

If you are doing this to use an iso to do an install, but want to use a usb drive instead of cd-r, you should check out unetbootin. It will extract everything and install syslinux for you.

I'm using Slack 13.37 right now. There is no slackbuild or precompiled package for UNetBootIn, AFAIK.
I just want to get a xubuntu image onto my empty partition.

---------- Post added 02-03-12 at 11:35 PM ----------

Thanks for the help STDOUBT

Have you managed to run unetbootin on slackware? I tried it last night but nothing happened. I downloaded it from sf and chmod'ed it to +x. No errors, but no unetbootin.

1 members found this post helpful.

Only a few of the newer iso images are what are termed hybrid iso's. A normal live or installer cd/dvd can not be copied over as such with dd.

Tools exist for some distro's to install them in some fashion to a usb.

If it is a somewhat new distro then you can boot to the iso and install to the usb as if it were a hard drive. Need to be careful. Some catches exist on that.

If you want you can see www.pendrivelinux.com for some ways to either try grub4dos or grub or such to boot to the iso image on the usb.

See it also for other tools to create live usb's of some sort.

i've seems problem here...