nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/installation/installing-usb.xml
Rastus Vernon d6998b0674 nixos manual: recommend use of dd for writing the image
Unetbootin works by altering the image and placing a boot loader on it.
For this reason, it cannot work with UEFI and the installation guides
for other distributions (incl. Debian and Fedora) recommend against
using it.

Since dd writes the image verbatim to the drive, and not just the files,
it is not necessary to change the label after using it for UEFI
installations.

vcunat: tiny changes to the PR. Close #14139.
2016-04-02 17:41:38 +02:00

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XML

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">
<title>Booting from a USB Drive</title>
<para>For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from
a USB stick. You can use the <command>dd</command> utility to write the image:
<command>dd if=<replaceable>path-to-image</replaceable>
of=<replaceable>/dev/sdb</replaceable></command>. Be careful about specifying the
correct drive; you can use the <command>lsblk</command> command to get a list of
block devices.</para>
<para>The <command>dd</command> utility will write the image verbatim to the drive,
making it the recommended option for both UEFI and non-UEFI installations. For
non-UEFI installations, you can alternatively use
<link xlink:href="http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/">unetbootin</link>. If you
cannot use <command>dd</command> for a UEFI installation, you can also mount the
ISO, copy its contents verbatim to your drive, then either:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO
(visible with the blkid command), or</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Edit <filename>loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf</filename> on the drive
and change the <literal>root=</literal> field in the <literal>options</literal>
line to point to your drive (see the documentation on <literal>root=</literal>
in <link xlink:href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt">
the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>