On this tutorial we will create bootable USB on Linux terminal. Distribution I will be using is Debian 9, but this method should work on almost any distro.

Stick in your USB drive and make sure it has enough space to extract your .iso file whatever it is. I’m going to use debian.iso as example.

Then you will need to find the path to your .iso file. In my case it’s /home/h/Downloads/debian.iso

Then find your USB device path by executing the following command in your terminal as root or sudo user.

sudo fdisk -l

This will output all your storage devices, find your USB drive from there, it should look something like this.



Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type

/dev/sdc1 32 61489151 61489120 29.3G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)



So that means the device path is /dev/sdc

Yes, without the number, with the number it’s partition path so keep that in mind, if you use that your USB will not boot.

After this, copy the .iso file data to your USB drive with the following command.

sudo dd if=/path/to/your/iso of=/path/to/USB/DEVICE

In my example this would be

sudo dd if=/home/h/Downloads/debian.iso of=/dev/sdc

After a few minutes you should see confirmation output that your iso is extracted to the drive. This may take one minute or twenty minutes depending on your .iso image size and USB drive speed.

Your bootable drive should now be ready to go.

Final words on Create bootable USB on Linux terminal

Thanks for reading my post, I hope you have found it useful. Feel free to comment below if you have questions relating to post or just say thank you 🙂

Remember to follow us on Social Media and consider donating to keep this blog going, details are down below. Have a great day!

We are hiring authors, write for us, get paid in bitcoins!

You may also like these posts:

Install Instagram on Linux – Ramme, unofficial instagram for Linux

How to get free bitcoins – Up to 200 usd in BTC per hour!