CentOS-7 On A USB Stick

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I tried dd-ing the ISO onto a USB stick, as suggested in
, but it didn’t boot. Did anyone have better luck with this?

In any case, I got it working by running livecd-iso-to-disk on a Fedora-20 laptop. I’ve found before that this is the best program around for the purpose.

But I’ve 2 queries about this:

1. Why isn’t this program available on CentOS?

2. I find it strange the using a USB stick seems to be regarded as an out-of-the-ordinary idea. Are people still burning CDs or DVDs? And if so why?

I would have thought the time had come to make USB sticks the standard installation method?
Certainly it should be treated on a par with DVDs.

I have two HP MicroServers running under CentOS, and these don’t come with a DVD drive. I assumed this was becoming more or less standard?

8 thoughts on - CentOS-7 On A USB Stick

  • the ISOS are all ‘hybrid’ with uefi support ( ie on the iso and also has the hybrid-uefi tags ). So I’m interested to hear what else this script might have done.

  • I did all of my test installs from USB, so it does work.

    The command is:

    dd if=./.iso of=/dev/

    Obviously the name would be something like:
    CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso or CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-NetInstall.iso or any other of the isos

    It is critical that the device the the device name and not a partition name. In CentOS-6, you can use “Application => System Tools => Disk Utility” to find your USB stick’s device name. For example, /dev/sdd
    (device) would be used, not /dev/sdd1 (partition)

    You also have to run the command as root.

    So, a working command would be, as root (if your usb stick was /dev/sdd):

    dd if=./CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdd

    I have boot that exact USB stick on an older BIOS only Dell Laptop
    (m4500) with no UEFI, a new Thinkpad with UEFI secure boot mode on and off, and a M5A99X EVO R2.0 motherboard with UEFI and secureboot on and off. Installs were conducted on all with no issues.

  • Lamar Owen wrote:

    Apologies. I see now that it didn’t install for other reasons:
    —————————

  • Johnny Hughes wrote:

    I did give the command precisely as you suggest:
    dd if=./CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-KdeLive.iso of=/dev/sdb
    (noted at the time).

    The error message when I booted with the stick said that some file was not found.

    When I later ran livecd-iso-to-disk (under Fedora-20)
    I got a message that the USB partition had to be FAT formatted. I changed the partition type to FAT (hex 6) and it worked fine. So conceivably this was the reason why the dd-boot did not work. But I have had failure with ISOs installed with dd before (not CentOS).

  • Timothy Murphy wrote:

    I see on googling that this was a problem with the epel repository. I’m not sure if I installed the CentOS-7 version by mistake, while I am currently running CentOS-6.5.
    (I’m upgrading to CentOS-7 bit-by-bit, hence the error.)
    On running
    sudo rm -rf /etc/yum.repos.d/epel*
    I was able to run yum normally.

  • I just tried the USB stick method, using the CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Everything.iso as the media. The command line I
    used to copy the iso to the stick was:

    ddrescue –force CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Everything.iso /dev/sdb

    where /dev/sdb is my USB stick. I use ddrescue simply because it tends to be faster than dd for large images and it gives a progress display
    (and it’s in the repos for CentOS 6).

    The stick booted just fine into the installer, and while I did the media verification step I did not proceed to install (it was just a test boot).

    The USB stick involved is a low-end PNY 8GB stick, and here is the lsusb
    -v output:
    Bus 002 Device 007: ID 154b:007a PNY
    Device Descriptor:
    bLength 18
    bDescriptorType 1
    bcdUSB 2.00
    bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
    bDeviceSubClass 0
    bDeviceProtocol 0
    bMaxPacketSize0 64
    idVendor 0x154b PNY
    idProduct 0x007a
    bcdDevice 11.00
    iManufacturer 1 PNY Technologies
    iProduct 2 USB 2.0 FD
    iSerial 3 AA00000000009494
    bNumConfigurations 1
    Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength 9
    bDescriptorType 2
    wTotalLength 32
    bNumInterfaces 1
    bConfigurationValue 1
    iConfiguration 0
    bmAttributes 0x80
    (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower 500mA
    Interface Descriptor:
    bLength 9
    bDescriptorType 4
    bInterfaceNumber 0
    bAlternateSetting 0
    bNumEndpoints 2
    bInterfaceClass 8 Mass Storage
    bInterfaceSubClass 6 SCSI
    bInterfaceProtocol 80 Bulk-Only
    iInterface 0
    Endpoint Descriptor:
    bLength 7
    bDescriptorType 5
    bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
    bmAttributes 2
    Transfer Type Bulk
    Synch Type None
    Usage Type Data
    wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes
    bInterval 255
    Endpoint Descriptor:
    bLength 7
    bDescriptorType 5
    bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT
    bmAttributes 2
    Transfer Type Bulk
    Synch Type None
    Usage Type Data
    wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes
    bInterval 255
    Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
    bLength 10
    bDescriptorType 6
    bcdUSB 2.00
    bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
    bDeviceSubClass 0
    bDeviceProtocol 0
    bMaxPacketSize0 64
    bNumConfigurations 1
    Device Status: 0x0000
    (Bus Powered)