Hands on: Install Linux with a USB stick

Ironically, the quickest way to create a Fedora 9 bootable stick is from Windows. Visit liveusb-creator for a graphical utility that can also run from Fedora Linux, but it will need a couple of extra packages, as the website explains. To create the image, you’ll need a Flash drive with at least 1GB of space and a copy of the Fedora 9 live CD ISO file, or a fast internet connection; the utility will download the image, if necessary.

From Fedora itself, if you do not wish to use the third-party graphical tool, you can set up the disk with a command-line utility. Open a terminal and run, as root:
# yum install livecd-tools
Once the short download and installation is complete, insert the USB stick and wait for Fedora to mount it and add an icon to the desktop.

To run the command-line utility, you must supply the partition you wish to install to: run the ‘df -h’ command to display mounted drives –­ the device is likely to be /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1 on most systems. Next, right-click on the icon to unmount the drive’s filesystem, but don’t remove it. If you’re running from a Fedora live CD, you can now set up the stick easily. As root, enter:
# livecd-iso-to-disk /dev/live /dev/sdxn

Replace xn appropriately with the USB stick’s device name. If you’re running from an installed Fedora system, or want to create a bootable stick from a different version of Fedora 9 you must have a copy of the ISO file, and run:
# livecd-iso-to-disk 4 /path/to/iso /dev/sdxn
Add the option
--overlay-size-mb 512
to create an image with a persistent data area ­ in this case, 512MB of space. You’ll need sufficient space on the USB stick for the live CD image to be copied in addition to the space desired for persistent storage. A real example, for instance, is to install the standard Fedora 9 i686 live CD with 1GB of persistent storage on a stick found at /dev/sdb1:
# livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 1024 /home/myid/Downloads/Fedora-9-i686-Live.iso 4 /dev/sdb1

The utility will inform you if there are any problems. Note that the stick must be partitioned and formatted with the Fat filesystem, although standard Flash drives come
pre-formatted in this way. Once done, reboot and set the computer to boot from the USB stick in the system Bios.