Installing Debian from a USB stick
Mon Sep 12 21:04:25 UTC 2011
I used to install Linux distributions burning a CD and booting from it. But today is lot more easier to find USB drives at home than blank CDs. Moreover, some laptops don't longer have a CD tray in order to make them thinner.
Ok, first of all. Grab a bootable image for your platform (i386 for me) from this URL (or navigate through parent folders):
Dump the previous image directly into the device (I use zcat here because it's a compressed image, .gz)
zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdb
Now you can download your favourite ISO flavour which the bootable image will use as installer.
Don't forget to copy it to the brand new USB drive (at this point the USB have to have just one partition)
cp debian-6.0.2.1-i386-netinst.iso /media/Debian\ Inst/
That's it. Reboot your computer ensuring the boot order put USB disks before others such as network or harddisks.
Keywords: usb,debian,install,image,iso,boot
