- Mac os make linux usb
- What You’ll Need
- Kali Linux Live USB Install Procedure
- Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on macOS/OS X (DD)
- Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on macOS/OS X (Etcher)
- Create a bootable USB stick on macOS
- Apple hardware considerations
- 2. Requirements
- 3. Prepare the USB stick
- 4. Install and run Etcher
- 5. Etcher configuration
- 6. Write to device
- 7. Boot your Mac
- Finding help
Mac os make linux usb
Our favourite way, and the fastest method, for getting up and running with Kali Linux is to run it “live” from a USB drive. This method has several advantages:
- It’s non-destructive — it makes no changes to the host system’s hard drive or installed OS, and to go back to normal operations, you simply remove the “Kali Live” USB drive and restart the system.
- It’s portable — you can carry Kali Linux in your pocket and have it running in minutes on an available system
- It’s customizable — you can roll your own custom Kali Linux ISO image and put it onto a USB drive using the same procedures
- It’s potentially persistent — with a bit of extra effort, you can configure your Kali Linux “live” USB drive to have persistent storage, so the data you collect is saved across reboots
In order to do this, we first need to create a bootable USB drive which has been set up from an ISO image of Kali Linux.
What You’ll Need
- A verified copy of the appropriate ISO image of the latest Kali build image for the system you’ll be running it on: see the details on downloading official Kali Linux images.
- If you’re running under macOS/OS X, you can use the dd command, which is pre-installed on those platforms, or use Etcher.
- A USB thumb drive, 4GB or larger. (Systems with a direct SD card slot can use an SD card with similar capacity. The procedure is identical.)
Kali Linux Live USB Install Procedure
The specifics of this procedure will vary depending on whether you’re doing it on a Windows, Linux, or macOS/OS X system.
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on macOS/OS X (DD)
macOS/OS X is based on UNIX, so creating a bootable Kali Linux USB drive in an macOS/OS X environment is similar to doing it on Linux. Once you’ve downloaded and verified your chosen Kali ISO file, you use dd to copy it over to your USB drive. If you would prefer to use Etcher, then follow the same directions as a Windows user. Note that the USB drive will have a path similar to /dev/disk2.
WARNING: Although the process of imaging Kali on a USB drive is very easy, you can just as easily overwrite a disk drive you didn’t intend to with dd if you do not understand what you are doing, or if you specify an incorrect output path. Double-check what you’re doing before you do it, it’ll be too late afterwards.
- Without the USB drive plugged into the system, open a Terminal window, and type the command diskutil list at the command prompt.
- You will get a list of the device paths (looking like /dev/disk0, /dev/disk1, etc.) of the disks mounted on your system, along with information on the partitions on each of the disks.
3. Plug in your USB device to your Apple computer’s USB port and run the command diskutil list a second time. Your USB drive’s path will most likely be the last one. In any case, it will be one which wasn’t present before. In this example, you can see that there is now a /dev/disk6 which wasn’t previously present.
4. Unmount the drive (assuming, for this example, the USB drive is /dev/disk6 — do not simply copy this, verify the correct path on your own system!):
- Proceed to (carefully!) image the Kali ISO file on the USB device. The following command assumes that your USB drive is on the path /dev/disk6, and you’re in the same directory with your Kali Linux ISO, which is named “kali-linux-2023.2-live-amd64.iso”. We will replace /dev/disk6 with /dev/rdisk6 to improve the write speeds:
There is a chance you may receive an error when running the above command, that you will receive the following error:
If this is the case, please change the 4M to be 4m . Additionally, increasing the blocksize (bs) will speed up the write progress, but will also increase the chances of creating a bad USB drive. Using the given value on macOS/OS X has produced reliable images consistently.
Another potential error will be that status=progress does not work on your version of macOS. If this is the case, remove this section and instead use CTRL+T to measure status.
Imaging the USB drive can take a good amount of time, over half an hour is not unusual, as the sample output below shows. Be patient!
The dd command provides no feedback until it’s completed, but if your drive has an access indicator, you’ll probably see it flickering from time to time. The time to dd the image across will depend on the speed of the system used, USB drive itself, and USB port it’s inserted into. Once dd has finished imaging the drive, it will output something that looks like this:
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on macOS/OS X (Etcher)
Alternatively, Etcher can be used.
- Download and run Etcher.
- Choose the Kali Linux ISO file to be imaged with “select image” and verify that the USB drive to be overwritten is the correct one. Click the “Flash!” button once ready.
3. Once Etcher alerts you that the image has been flashed, you can safely remove the USB drive.
You can now boot into a Kali Live / Installer environment using the USB device.
To boot from an alternate drive on an macOS/OS X system, bring up the boot menu by pressing the Option key immediately after powering on the device and select the drive you want to use.
Updated on: 2023-May-30
Author: g0tmi1k
Create a bootable USB stick on macOS
Creating a bootable USB stick is very simple, especially if you’re going to use the USB stick with a generic Windows or Linux PC. We’re going to cover the process in the next few steps.
Apple hardware considerations
There are a few additional considerations when booting the USB stick on Apple hardware. This is because Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’, summoned by holding the Option/alt (⌥) key when booting, won’t detect the USB stick without a specific partition table and layout. We’ll cover this in a later step.
2. Requirements
- A 2GB or larger USB stick/flash drive
- An Apple computer or laptop running macOS
- An Ubuntu ISO file. See Get Ubuntu for download links
3. Prepare the USB stick
To ensure maximum compatibility with Apple hardware, we’re going to first blank and reformat the USB stick using Apple’s ‘Disk Utility’. But this step can be skipped if you intend to use the USB stick with only generic PC hardware.
- Launch Disk Utility from Applications>Utilities or Spotlight search
- Insert your USB stick and observe the new device added to Disk Utility
- Select the USB stick device (you may need to enable the option View>Show All Devices) and select Erase from the tool bar (or right-click menu)
- Set the format to MS-DOS (FAT) and the scheme to GUID Partition Map
- Check you’ve chosen the correct device and click Erase
Warning: Disk Utility needs to be used with caution as selecting the wrong device or partition can result in data loss.
4. Install and run Etcher
To write the ISO file to the USB stick, we’re going to use a free and open source application called Etcher. After downloading this and clicking to mount the package, Etcher can either be run in-place or dragged into your Applications folder.
By default, recent versions of macOS block the running of applications from unidentified developers. To side-step this issue, enable ‘App Store and identified developers’ in the ‘Security & Privacy’ pane of System Preferences. If you are still warned against running the application, click ‘Open Anyway’ in the same pane.
5. Etcher configuration
Etcher will configure and write to your USB device in three stages, each of which needs to be selected in turn:
- Select image will open a file requester from which should navigate to and select the ISO file downloaded previously. By default, the ISO file will be in your Downloads folder.
- Select drive, replaced by the name of your USB device if one is already attached, lets you select your target device. You will be warned if the storage space is too small for your selected ISO.
- Flash! will activate when both the image and the drive have been selected. As with Disk Utility, Etcher needs low-level access to your storage hardware and will ask for your password after selection.
6. Write to device
After entering your password, Etcher will start writing the ISO file to your USB device.
The Flash stage of the process will show progress, writing speed and an estimated duration until completion. This will be followed by a validation stage that will ensure the contents of the USB device are identical to the source image.
When everything has finished, Etcher will declare the process a success.
Congratulations! You now have Ubuntu on a USB stick, bootable and ready to go.
Warning: After the write process has completed, macOS may inform you that ‘The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer’. Don’t select Initialise. Instead, select Eject and remove the USB device.
7. Boot your Mac
If you want to use your USB stick with an Apple Mac, you will need to restart or power-on the Mac with the USB stick inserted while the Option/alt (⌥) key is pressed.
This will launch Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’ which shows bootable devices connected to the machine. Your USB stick should appear as gold/yellow and labelled ‘EFI Boot’. Selecting this will lead you to the standard Ubuntu boot menu.
Finding help
If your Mac still refuses to boot off your USB stick you may find it easier to boot and install off an Ubuntu DVD instead. See our How to burn a DVD on macOS for further details.
Alternatively, if you feel confident using the macOS command line, see the community documentation on How to install Ubuntu on MacBook using USB Stick for a more manual approach.
If you want to install Ubuntu, follow our install Ubuntu desktop tutorial.
Finally, if you get stuck, help is always at hand: