Create a bootable USB stick in Linux

Note: These instructions erase the whole stick. The result will be just one bootable OS on the stick. In the next post I will tell how to get the stick back to normal, somewhat.

  1. Stick the USB stick in the computer
  2. In the terminal, determine the device:
    sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*

    The device listed multiple times, with a number in the end and without, is the one to use. E.g. /dev/sdb

  3. If you have automount enabled, unmount the device.
  4. cd to the folder where the iso file is.
  5. Create bootable device:
    sudo dd if=filename.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync

    The device path is an example. However, it must be without number in the end.

Learned from here http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23267