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bd09ef9c21
"Ejecting" from the Finder ejects the entire device which is then not available for dd. diskutil unmountDisk does the right thing. Furthermore writing to diskN instead of rdiskN failed to complete even after waiting >10 minutes.
60 lines
2.5 KiB
XML
60 lines
2.5 KiB
XML
<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
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xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
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xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
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version="5.0"
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xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">
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<title>Booting from a USB Drive</title>
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<para>For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from
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a USB stick. You can use the <command>dd</command> utility to write the image:
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<command>dd if=<replaceable>path-to-image</replaceable>
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of=<replaceable>/dev/sdb</replaceable></command>. Be careful about specifying the
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correct drive; you can use the <command>lsblk</command> command to get a list of
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block devices.</para>
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<para>On macOS:
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<programlisting>
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$ diskutil list
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[..]
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/dev/diskN (external, physical):
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#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
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[..]
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$ diskutil unmountDisk diskN
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Unmount of all volumes on diskN was successful
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$ sudo dd bs=1m if=nix.iso of=/dev/rdiskN
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</programlisting>
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Using the 'raw' <command>rdiskN</command> device instead of <command>diskN</command>
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completes in minutes instead of hours. After <command>dd</command> completes, a GUI
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dialog "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" will pop up, which
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can be ignored.</para>
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<para>The <command>dd</command> utility will write the image verbatim to the drive,
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making it the recommended option for both UEFI and non-UEFI installations. For
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non-UEFI installations, you can alternatively use
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<link xlink:href="http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/">unetbootin</link>. If you
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cannot use <command>dd</command> for a UEFI installation, you can also mount the
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ISO, copy its contents verbatim to your drive, then either:
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO
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(visible with the blkid command), or</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Edit <filename>loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf</filename> on the drive
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and change the <literal>root=</literal> field in the <literal>options</literal>
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line to point to your drive (see the documentation on <literal>root=</literal>
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in <link xlink:href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt">
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the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>If you want to load the contents of the ISO to ram after bootin
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(So you can remove the stick after bootup) you can append the parameter
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<literal>copytoram</literal>to the <literal>options</literal> field.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</para>
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</section>
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