I got an urge to install the MultiBoot-ISO I recently posted about. I picked up a cheap 8GB USB stick from Newegg. In order to install the .iso file to USB, I needed UNetbootin. I really like instructions, even if the steps turn out to be simple, so I’ll detail my adventure below.
I’m using Ubuntu 7.10. Download UNetbootin to the Desktop. I did this via the torrent link, which took almost a week to download at 4 GB in size (I used Azureus, which appears to now be named Vuze). There are two dependencies that need to be installed before running UNetbootin: mtools and p7zip.
cd Desktop
sudo chmod +x unetbootin-linux-275
sudo apt-get install mtools p7zip p7zip-full
sudo ./unetbootin-linux-275
This starts up the rather simple GUI. Select the radio button for a Diskimage ISO install. Navigate to and select the MultiISO-1.0.iso in the GUI. Down lower, make sure USB is selected.
Inset the USB stick and let Ubuntu mount it. I need to find this mount point, and Nautilus isn’t imediately helpful as it tells me /media/PATRIOT. Thankfully mount will give me what I need.
sudo mount
…
/dev/sdb1 on /media/PATRIOT …
Back in the UNetbootin GUI, select USB Drive as the type and /dev/sdb1 from the Drive dropdown. Reverify everything to avoid accidentally installing to the local disk! Click OK to start. For such a long download and large file, the install takes maybe 4-5 minutes, which is mercifully nice.
What kind of file system did you install it to? Mine was NTFS, it would be interesting to see how well UNetbootin handled different file systems and DVD sized files such as this one. If you have any suggestions for the DVD please head over to their IRC room and bug EmErgE about swapping (not adding as it is already pushing DVD size limits) some of the most likely unsused distros for some more security related ones. (i.e. HeX, Helix, Samurai, etc..)