nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/installation/installing-usb.xml
Vincent Murphy bd09ef9c21
Update macos USB instructions
"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.
2018-01-06 18:13:58 +00:00

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<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>On macOS:
<programlisting>
$ diskutil list
[..]
/dev/diskN (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
[..]
$ diskutil unmountDisk diskN
Unmount of all volumes on diskN was successful
$ sudo dd bs=1m if=nix.iso of=/dev/rdiskN
</programlisting>
Using the 'raw' <command>rdiskN</command> device instead of <command>diskN</command>
completes in minutes instead of hours. After <command>dd</command> completes, a GUI
dialog "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" will pop up, which
can be ignored.</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/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt">
the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>If you want to load the contents of the ISO to ram after bootin
(So you can remove the stick after bootup) you can append the parameter
<literal>copytoram</literal>to the <literal>options</literal> field.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>