A quick way to make a USB bootable Ubuntu on OSX.

It’s quite a long time since my last post. Very busy on new projects as always and getting settled in the new house / office

The next post is mostly copied from Ubuntu.com. But I see it as a quick reminder for my own Linux boot questions on mac. I keep forgetting the keys and command’s to work with diskimages. The created stick will be bootable for most comps not only macs!

Note: this procedure requires that you create an .img file from the .iso file you download.

Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil <pre>hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ubuntu1210_32.img ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso</pre>

Note: OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically.</li> 

  * Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices.
  * Insert your flash media.
  * Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2).
  * Unmount the disk so dd can do its work. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2). 
    <pre>diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2</pre>
    
    Note for the linux guys among us there is: $ diskutil unmount /dev/disk2s1</li> 
    
      * Overwrite contents of USB stick with the bootable Ubuntu image. Warning stick content will be lost. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m 
        <pre>sudo dd if=ubuntu1204_32.img.dmg of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m</pre>
        
        Note: Using /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk may be faster</li> 
        
          * Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes. 
            <pre>diskutil eject /dev/disk2</pre>
        
          * Restart your Mac and press alt/option key while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB stick.
  
            (windows keyboard, windows key or alt)</ol>