Unetbootin
A Tool for making bootable USB sticks.
A very useful utility for generating bootable USB sticks is available (see the link on the side)
Some issues to be aware of:
Unetbootin will only install to a stick that has been partitioned. It looks for the filesystem type which is only tagged on the partition type. This creates some issues in some cases. You must ensure that the partiton is created, it is of type FAT, and there is a master boot record on the stick, and that the partition is active.
Unetbootin runs on both mac and windows.
On a Mac: ERASE the partition with diskutil. Do not try to partition it.
On Windows: formatting should be fine.
A word about BIOSs:
You may need to change some settings to get the stick to boot. In my case the BIOS seems to treat partitioned sticks as drives so you will need to set the boot order. Unpartitioned sticks seem to have less trouble but there is no tool to build them except manually on Linux.
Important points:
- You need a FAT file system in a partition.
- The partition needs to be marked bootable.
- You may need to write a master boot record.
