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I have downloaded the ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso. How do I create a bootable Ubuntu USB stick using my Macbook Air which is running OS X 10.10.2? I cannot create a bootable CD, since the Air is designed without the optical drive.

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Why is this downvoted? – Kolob Canyon Jan 3 '17 at 8:06
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Possible duplicate of How do I make a bootable USB flash drive a Mac? – John N Feb 19 '17 at 11:04
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@John N, The question is not a possible duplicate of the question you linked to, That question is about creating an OS X USB Installer and has nothing to do with writing an Ubuntu ISO Image to USB. which can be done with dd. – user3439894 Feb 19 '17 at 14:51
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This question is answered directly by Ubuntu - How to create a bootable USB stick on macOS – Allan Feb 19 '17 at 19:17
up vote 23 down vote

Follow these steps to create an .img file from the .iso file you have, and then copy to the USB stick. This will also change the filesystem that is on the USB to make it bootable.

  1. Open the Terminal Application.

  2. Type command to convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option.

    hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso

  3. Insert your flash media.

  4. Type command to determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2).

    diskutil list

  5. Type command to unmount the flash (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2).

    diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN

  6. Type DD command (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./ubuntu.img). Prepend the device path with "r" for the raw path which is much faster than without the "r".

    sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m

    Note: your file might also be called downloaded.img.dmg. That's okay.

  7. Type command to eject the flash drive.

    diskutil eject /dev/diskN

  8. Restart your Mac and press alt/option key while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB stick as the boot disk.

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Thanks, It worked by this. I Also found more way's to fix this problem. The link form the Ubuntu page itself was good, it works now. – RMDM094 Apr 7 '15 at 19:44
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I was using GNU dd instead of BSD dd (I've installed coreutils and every GNU tool I can). I got an error like dd: invalid number: '1m' and had to replace bs=1m with bs=1M. – joelittlejohn Nov 24 '16 at 21:30
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You do not need to convert the ISO Image to any other format in order to write it directly to a USB Flash Drive! – user3439894 Feb 19 '17 at 22:04
    
To support user3439894's claim, the hash of the img file after running hdiutil is exactly the same as the iso file. – gluxon Jul 9 '17 at 2:08
up vote -5 down vote

Video guides help me a lot more then text.

check this one out I found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7osgsM20Nkc

hope it helps.

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