Bootable dos usb drive linux

Make a bootable USB drive on any Linux distro

In this post, you will learn how to make a bootable USB drive in Linux system using the native Linux tools.

I know that many of you are scared of the Linux command line. Of course, you can use graphical programs to make a bootable USB in Linux. But believe me, you will benefit so much if learn the Linux command line tools. For example, if you need to make a bootable USB drive in Linux, different distributions provide different graphical programs to do that, but every Linux distribution has the same built-in tool to do the same job. So, you will benefit for it long-term.

Make a bootable USB drive in Linux

To make a bootable USB drive in Linux, you just need to learn one simple command. The command is dd .

Options explained:

sudo means to give admin privileges to this command.

dd is the program name.

bs=4M means to use a block size of 4M, so the system will read and write the data in chunks of 4M. This option is simply meant to speed up the process.

if specifies the source to read. Simply put, this is an ISO file of the Linux image you download from the Linux distribution website.

path-to-the-ISO — path to the ISO file. For example,

of specified the destination or where to write this ISO file. In other words, it is your USB drive. This is the most important part of the command, If you do mistake here, you can screw up your whole system. So, be very-very careful.

/dev/sdX means the name assigned to a device by your Linux system. It is some kind of analogy of disks C, D, E in Windows systems.

To find out the name Linux assigned to your flash drive, run this command:

Then you need to analyze the output like the one above. Usually, the USB devices are listed at the end. You find your flash drive by its size. It usually has only one partition. I know that my flash drive is 15Gb. So, its name is sdd. This name is not permanent and it depends on the order the drives are mounted to the system. So, you need to check your USB drive name every time you insert it into the computer

status=progress is not necessary. However, it is helpful because it will show you the progress during the writing process. Without this option, nothing will be printed on the terminal screen.

sync is actually another command, not an option. Sync clears the cache. Thanks to the && signs it will be executed as a chain with dd. This will make sure that all the data is written to the flash drive and nothing is left in the cache.

NOTE: I also need to WARN you that this procedure will wipe all the data from your USB flash drive. So, if you have any important data on it, copy it somewhere else before you run this command. I also recommend to back up the data from other hard drives, so you do not destroy them accidentally.

So, when you are sure that there is no valuable data on the flash drive and you specified all the names correctly, especially the of option, press Enter.

It usually takes several minutes to complete. When the process is finished, you can reboot your system and boot from a newly created bootable USB.

That is the way you can make a bootable USB drive in Linux.

Restore the USB drive

After you have used the bootable USB flash drive, you need to restore it back to its normal not-bootable state. So, to do that, you need to remove the bootable system from it. Run this command:

Then, where again sdX is your flash drive name without any number (in my case it is sdd). You can check it with:

After that create a new partition on it:

Select dos option.

And press enter to create a new partition.

Keep it at its maximum size. So, press enter.

Next, press enter again to make it primary. Navigate with the arrow keys to write and press Enter to write the changes.

Finally, type yes to confirm and quit the program.

Then, run this command, to check if a new partition has been created:

As you can see, the new partition has been created. It is named sdd1 in my example.

Then, format this partition as FAT file system:

Where ‘ALU’ is the label I give to this drive, you can use your name instead. And sdd1 is the partition name. Unlike in all the previous steps, where you used the device names, in this command you need to specify the partition name which ends with the number.

After these uncomplicated steps, your flash drive is like new and you can use it to store files.

Conclusion

Now you know how to make a bootable USB drive in Linux. You can now proceed to the installation process or test Linux live distributions.

So, leave your comment and give your opinion about this tutorial. Did you like it? Did you know about this tool?

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Flashing BIOS from Linux

This article aims on providing information on flashing your system BIOS under Linux. Most manufacturers provide a Windows executable or a BIOS executable that can only be run under Windows. However, there are a few utilities that allow you to upgrade your system BIOS under Linux.

Contents

fwupd

fwupd is a simple daemon to allow session software to update device firmware on your local machine.

Large vendors including Dell and Logitech use this way to distribute firmware updates to Linux.

fwupd only supports flashing BIOS updates in UEFI mode.

See fwupd for further information about installation and usage.

BiosDisk

BiosDisk simplifies the process of flashing your system BIOS under Linux.

Installation

Usage

To use the biosdisk utility to create a BIOS flash image, first download the latest raw BIOS image for your system from your manufacturer’s website. Make sure however, that you always get the BIOS executable and NOT the Windows executable. You then have one of two options: create a ISO or install the image for your bootloader.

• The mkimage action will create a ISO image on the user’s hard drive. Usage is the following:

• The install action will create the biosdisk image, copy the image file to /boot, and then update the bootloader with an entry for the image. Then all the user has to do is boot the system and select the image to flash the BIOS; this will load the biosdisk image directly from the hard drive and flash the BIOS.

Flashrom

Flashrom is a utility for identifying, reading, writing, verifying and erasing flash chips. It is designed to flash BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and various programmer devices.

Installation

Usage

Find out if your motherboard and chipset (internal) is supported by flashrom at this website. Supported Hardware You can also find out if your hardware is supported by issuing the following command

The above command will tell you your motherboard and chipset. You can then find out if yours is supported by issuing this command:

On modern mainboards you probably get more than one rom chip listed. You have to select the chipname you get from the upper command. Then you use the -c option to select which rom is affected by the command

Write and verify the new BIOS image (proprietary or Coreboot) on the ROM chip:

If you want to flash other flash chips on your mainboard, you will find all options with

FreeDOS

FreeDOS a free DOS-compatible operating system, is up to the challenge, no need for proprietary DOS versions. So, all you need is a bootable floppy disk image with FreeDOS kernel on it.

Unetbootin

By far the easiest way to make a bootable FreeDOS USB Stick is using unetbootin AUR .

You should format a pendrive with FAT16 and flag it as «boot» (you may do this through a GUI with gparted or partitionmanager ). Then, after mounting the flash drive, select under distribution FreeDOS and your mounted stick. The app will automatically download the image for you and copy it to the drive. Finally, you may copy everything you want to flash there (BIOS, firmwares, etc).

dosemu

The problem with the official FreeDOS images is the lack of extra space for holding firmware and BIOS update files and programs. The easiest way to create a DOS, bootable FAT drive of arbitrary size under Linux is to mount a FAT drive under dosemu and then make it bootable with the FreeDOS sys command.

Pre-built images

Using a FreeDOS-provided Disk Image + USB stick on Linux

As of writing (2017-07-11), unetbootin AUR does not support versions of FreeDOS more recent than 1.0 (current version is 1.2). The following procedure worked to upgrade an Inspiron 17-3737 to the A09 BIOS. (Dell offers this as a possibility on their site)

Some notes before starting:

• You can check your current BIOS version with dmidecode . You might already be at the latest version.
• Ensure that your hardware vendor has verified this method works (use of FreeDOS to run BIOS update .exe )
• Laptop users should not attempt this without AC power
• This is dangerous, and you assume all risk for following this procedure.

1. Grab the latest USB installer from the FreeDOS Download Page
   • author note: used the «Full» version on suspicion that it might include more drivers, etc (pure speculation)
2. Extract the archive, you get a .img file
3. Determine which of /dev/sdX is your USB stick (use fdisk -l )
4. Write the image directly to the block device:
   • dd if=FD12FULL.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress (where X is the letter representing your USB stick as a block device, do not write the image to a partition)
5. Double-check that the image copying worked:
   • fdisk -l (you should see a single partition on a DOS disk with the bootable («boot») flag set)
6. Mount the partition, and copy over the .exe used to update your firmware
   • Stay on the safe side and limit the filename to 8 characters (without extension), upper case
   • Ensure that you verified any checksums provided by your hardware vendor
7. Unmount and reboot. Do whatever is needed to boot from the USB drive

Now you will find yourself in the FreeDOS live installation environment.

1. Select your language
2. You will be prompted to install FreeDOS
   • Select «No — Return to DOS»
3. You should see a prompt ( C:\> )
4. Run dir /w and verify that your firmware upgrade tool is present
5. Run the executable
   • author note: in the case of the Dell tool, the machine displayed a spash screen and then rebooted. Upon reboot, it started the firmware upgrade automatically, and ran for about 2 minutes with the fan at full speed)
6. Once the process specific to your vendor completes, optionally verify through the BIOS setup screen, as well as by running dmidecode when you are back in linux

Using a FreeDOS-provided Disk Image + USB stick with Windows

The author for this procedure encountered several issues related to mounting the FAT partition type of the USB using the previous method on Linux with dd. This procedure seeks to outline a method to flash the BIOS with FreeDOS, a USB stick and Ruckus on Windows 7/8/8.1/10. This procedure was performed on 4 JULY 2019 on a Dell Inspiron 5547 Laptop to upgrade from BIOS A10 to A12.

• Download and install Rufus for Windows. This can be either the full installation or the portable version.
• Download the latest Full USB installer for FreeDOS (v1.2 as of the time of writing).
• Download the latest BIOS update from the vendors’ website
• It is assumed that dmidecode is installed on the system

1. Extract the contents of the FD12FULL.zip archive, noting the .img file
2. Insert a flash drive and flash the FD12FULL.img file using Rufus, leaving all default options
   • Detailed use of Rufus is not covered in this guide. Refer to Rufus’ manual or documentation for detailed usage
3. Once flashed with Rufus, rename the BIOS file with 8 uppercase characters (not including the extension) and copy it over to the flash drive
4. Eject the flash drive and plug it into the laptop.
5. Perform whatever steps are necessary to boot from the USB with LEGACY BOOT
   • Author note: For my Dell Laptop, I press F12 for boot options and select ‘USB Storage Device’ under ‘Legacy Options’. I have explicitly enabled legacy boot from within my BIOS, but this option may not be present if the system is only configured to boot with UEFI
6. You will be presented with the FreeDOS Installation environment
   • Select preferred language
   • Select ‘No — Return to DOS’ on the next screen
   • Type dir to view the contents of the USB flash drive
   • To execute the BIOS upgrade file, simply type the filename and press enter
   • Note: My upgrade took Images that are too large for a floppy

If your flash image is too large for a floppy, go to the FreeDos bootdisk website, and download the 10Mb hard-disk image. This image is a full disk image, including partitions, so adding your flash utility will be a little trickier:

First find the first partition (at time of writing, the first partition starts at block 63; this means that the partitions starts at offset 512 * 63 = 32256 ). You can either use:

Now you can mount the image:

Then you can copy your flash utility onto the filesystem as normal. Once you are done:

The image can now be copied to a USB stick for booting, or booted as a memdisk as per normal instructions.

Usage

The OEM Bootdisk version is recommended, as it only includes kernel and command.com thus leaving more space for the flash utility and new BIOS image. Download the FreeDOS image and decompress it.

Copy your BIOS flash utility and new BIOS image to the mounted floppy disk image. Load the necessary modules:

/proc/fileystems shows if the needed file systems are supported. «loop mount» the floppy disk image to a temporary path:

If the mount went without errors, copy the BIOS flash utility and new BIOS image to the mounted floppy disk image. You will probably have to unzip the archive you downloaded from your motherboard vendor site, to get to those two files. For example:

Check that the two files were not too big for the floppy:

Unmount the floppy disk image:

The next step is to burn the floppy image to a CD/DVD-RW media, but in a way that it can be booted afterwards. First create a bootable CD image, and then burn it.

You may alternatively add your image to the GRUB menu. Install syslinux and copy memdisk and your image to /boot :

Now add an entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst :

Or for GRUB2 in /boot/grub/grub.cfg :

Or for syslinux in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg :

Finally reboot your machine, making sure the CD drive is first in the boot sequence, and run the BIOS upgrade procedure when the CD boots. If using the GRUB method, choose the new entry on the list, and it should boot into FreeDOS.

Bootable optical disk emulation

The script Geteltorito.pl will extract the El Torito boot image. It has worked with Lenovo laptops like the X1 Carbon, X200, X220, X230, X260, X395, W540, T450, T450s and P50. It may work for other vendors as well.

Installation

Usage

Get the bios update iso from the vendor support site. Run the geteltorito image extraction:

Copy the image to the usb thumbdrive:

Reboot and boot from the USB drive, follow vendor directions.

Using a Windows PE

If your manufacturer only provides an exe file and you were not successful following the prior advice , you can update your bios creating a Windows PE flash drive and from there flash the bios update as normally.

Usage

Download a ISO Windows PE to create a bootable drive.

Boot the usb and go to your manufacturer website and download the respective update, and execute normally.

HP Users

Some HP BIOS, especially the ones available in their business lines — ProDesk 600, EliteDesk 800, Thin Clients (T620, T730 etc) — have an option to update the BIOS from within the BIOS. This option is usually available under the File Menu and is called «Flash System ROM». There are 2 different directory structures that seem to work. Your BIOS may or may not work with either directory structure.

1. Placing the BIOS *.bin file in the root of the FAT32 formatted USB drive without any other directories. You do not need any other files.
2. Using the directory structure as described here

If neither of the above directory structures seem to work, then either use the FreeDOS method if HP provides the relevant DOS executables for your BIOS version or get a Windows machine to first create a HP BIOS Flash Recovery USB and then use that USB to flash the BIOS using the same Flash System ROM option.

1. Download the BIOS executable from HP’s support website using your serial number and indicating Windows as the OS .
2. The exe file is an archive and can then be extracted using 7z
   • 7z e .exe
3. Create the appropriate directory structure in the USB as described above. If one does not work, try the other
4. Unmount the USB
5. Attach it to the computer whose BIOS needs to be upgraded (if using a different computer to create the USB drive)
6. Reboot the computer and get into the BIOS using the assigned key (F10 for eg.) for your BIOS.
7. Once in the BIOS, find and select the «Flash System ROM» option. It may provide you with 3 options to flash from
   • USB
   • Hard disk
   • Network
8. Select the appropriate option (in this case USB) and it will pop up another text box which will have the file name of the BIN file that you put in the root of the USB drive.
9. Hit Enter and it should indicate that current version of the BIOS and new one being upgraded to.
10. Follow the screen prompts to upgrade the BIOS and finally reboot.

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