Creation of bootable USB with ISO for RHEL7

Red Hat provides boot media as ISO images, which you can use to boot your systems from. We will create a custom ISO image, which will allow us to boot a system in a similar way.

Let's create an ISO that you can mount as virtual media, write a CD-ROM, or even use dd to write the contents on a USB stick/disk through the following steps:

1. Install the required packages to create ISO9660 images, as follows:

   yum install -y genisoimage

2. Mount the RHEL 7 DVD's ISO image by executing the following command:

   mount -o loop /path/to/rhel-server-7.0-x86_64-dvd.iso /mnt

3. Copy the required files for the custom ISO from the RHEL 7 media via the following commands:

   mkdir -p /root/iso
   cp -r /mnt/isolinux /root/iso
   umount /mnt

4. Now, unmount the RHEL 7 DVD's ISO image by running the following:

   umount /mnt

5. Next, remove  the isolinux.cfg file using the following command:

   rm -f /root/iso/isolinux/isolinux.cfg

6. Create a new isolinux.cfg file, as follows:

   default vesamenu.c32
   timeout 600
   display boot.msg
   menu clear
   menu background splash.png
   menu title Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0
   menu vshift 8
   menu rows 18
   menu margin 8
   menu helpmsgrow 15
   menu tabmsgrow 13
   menu color sel 0 #ffffffff #00000000 none
   menu color title 0 #ffcc000000 #00000000 none
   menu color tabmsg 0 #84cc0000 #00000000 none
   menu color hotsel 0 #84cc0000 #00000000 none
   menu color hotkey 0 #ffffffff #00000000 none
   menu color cmdmark 0 #84b8ffff #00000000 none
   menu color cmdline 0 #ffffffff #00000000 none
   label linux
     menu label ^Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0
     kernel vmlinuz
     append initrd=initrd.img ks=http://kickstart.critter.be/kickstart.ks text
   
   label local
     menu label Boot from ^local drive
     localboot 0xffff
   
   menu end

7. Now, create the ISO by executing the following command:

   cd /root/iso
   # mkisofs -o ../boot.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -r .

   More information on the options used with the mkisofs command can be found in the man pages for mkisofs(1).

Making USB Media

1. Connect a USB flash drive to the system and execute the dmesg command. A log detailing all recent events will be displayed. At the bottom of this log, you will see a set of messages caused by the USB flash drive you just connected. It will look like a set of lines similar to the following:

    [ 170.171135] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

   Note the name of the connected device - in the above example, it is sdb.
2. Log in as root:

    $ su -

   Provide your root password when prompted.
3. Make sure that the device is not mounted. First, use the findmnt device command and the device name you found in the earlier steps. For example, if the device name is sdb, use the following command:

    # findmnt /dev/sdb

   If the command displays no output, you can proceed with the next step. However, if the command does provide output, it means that the device was automatically mounted and you must unmount it before proceeding. A sample output will look similar to the following:

    # findmnt /dev/sdb 
   TARGET   SOURCE   FSTYPE  OPTIONS
   /mnt/iso /dev/sdb iso9660 ro,relatime

   Note the TARGET column. Next, use the umount target command to unmount the device:

    # umount /mnt/iso

4. Use the dd command to write the installation ISO image directly to the USB device:

    # dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/device bs=blocksize

   Replace /path/to/image.iso with the full path to the ISO image file you downloaded, device with the device name as reported by the dmesg command earlier, and blocksize with a reasonable block size (for example, 512k) to speed up the writing process. The bs parameter is optional, but it can speed up the process considerably.

   Important

   Make sure to specify the output as the device name (for example, /dev/sda), not as a name of a partition on the device (for example, /dev/sda1).

   For example, if the ISO image is located in /home/testuser/Downloads/rhel-server-7.1x86_64-boot.iso and the detected device name is sdb, the command will look like the following:

    # dd if=/home/testuser/Downloads/rhel-server-7.1x86_64-boot.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=512k

5. Wait for dd to finish writing the image to the device. Note that no progress bar is displayed; the data transfer is finished when the # prompt appears again. After the prompt is displayed, log out from the root account and unplug the USB drive.

Recommended Links

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

Top articles

Sites

2.2. Making Installation USB Media

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: February, 17, 2021