Preparing installation USB from Mac OSX

[onnozw...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I didn't find any recipe to install Qubes on a USB stick from OSX; specifically at https://qubes-os.org/wiki/InstallationGuideR2 where I would expect such info. I'd like to suggest the following text (trac markup included):

To install on Mac OSX, use the {{{ mount }}} command to determine the USB device name:

{{{
macbook:~ user$ mount
/dev/disk1 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
...
/dev/disk2s1 on /Volumes/MYUSB4GB (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
}}}

In this case, the device is /dev/disk2. The first is the OS disk, so leave that alone. Unmount the filesystem:

{{{
macbook:~ user$ diskutil unmount /Volumes/MYUSB4GB/
Volume MYUSB4GB on disk2s1 unmounted
}}}

Then copy the iso to the RAW device. In this example that's rdisk2, not disk2. All data on the USB stick will be erased.

{{{
macbook:~ user$ sudo dd if=Qubes-R2-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
Password:
2935+0 records in
2935+0 records out
3077570560 bytes transferred in 613.278852 secs (5018224 bytes/sec)
}}}

Don't forget to specify the block size, because it may take hours if you don't. Using Unetbootin for OSX to write the USB stick seems to result in a USB stick that hangs during boot.

Hope this helps anyone,

Kind regards
Onno

[Eric Duncan]

Thanks for this. Though, macOS Sierra needs a capital "1M" instead of "1m".

$ sudo dd if=~/Downloads/Qubes-R4.0-rc2-x86_64.iso of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1M