Why not just use Terminal?
Just use dd
since Mac OS X is just a unix variant. You can test to see if it is installed by going to the terminal.
open up spotlight and type terminal and hit enter
cmd+space -> Terminal
type in the terminal
$ which dd
if it gives you a path, it's installed. if there is no output and an empty prompt, you'll have to install it manually (though, i doubt that will be the case).
you basically have a unix shell running bash
at your disposal and it would be easier to use your built-in tools. it'll also teach you some basics.
dd
is not typically advised to people unfamiliar with the tool because if used in an incorrect manner, it could destory your hdd, hence its nickname, destroy disk.
im not sure what tools you'd have available to check your mount points and the devices mounted at those points.
Figuring out your mount points
The most common tools for figuring out where your devices are mounted typically are
df - report file system disk space usage (df -h prints human readable info)
mount - mount a filesystem (mount on its own will print similar info)
fdisk - manipulate disk partition table (fdisk -l will list local partitions according to the device)
if in doubt, check if fdisk
is available.
$ which fdisk
/sbin/fdisk
$ fdisk -l
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sda: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdb: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdc: Permission denied
$ sudo fdisk -l
...lots of information here...
...partition schema here...
Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: (some type)
Disk identifier: (id here)
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 3907028991 3907026944 1.8T b W95 FAT32
Disk /dev/sdc: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: (some type)
Disk identifier: (id here)
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdc1 2048 1953515519 1953513472 931.5G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdc2 1953515520 3907028991 1953513472 931.5G Microsoft basic data
Disk /dev/sdd: 15 GiB, 16131293184 bytes, 31506432 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1 2048 31506431 31504384 15G b W95 FAT32
The stuff you care about will look somewhat like this.
Disk /dev/sdd: 15 GiB, 16131293184 bytes, 31506432 sectors
...redundant information here...
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1 2048 31506431 31504384 15G b W95 FAT32
We know the device name and where it is located.
/dev/sdd (the device name)
/dev/sdd1 (the device partition)
to confirm, we just use df
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 793M 9.4M 784M 2% /run
/dev/sda5 450G 15G 413G 4% /
tmpfs 3.9G 780K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3 96M 29M 68M 30% /boot/efi
tmpfs 793M 24K 793M 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdd1 16G 11M 15G 1% /media/$USER/UBSKEY
Once you know where your usb drive is mounted, unmount it before preceding
$ umount /dev/sdXy
for example
$ umount /dev/sdd1
It's straight forward from here.
Writing the ISO to USB
We know where the iso is, usually Home -> Downloads
(or something similar). Now we just tell dd
to write to the usb stick to make a live medium (source). The general idea is outlined as
for example
$ cd ~/Downloads
$ ls -l
total 0 (if nothing is present)
or
...file names here...
$ sudo dd if=ubuntu-file-name.iso of=/dev/sdd bs=4M && sync
wait until it is finished. there will be no indication of what is happening until it has completed. sync will make sure everything turned out alright and print out information indicating what it has read and written once it has finished.
Note: If you use dd
to write to a partition, it will always fail to boot. you have to write to the first byte of the device so that it can create a boot sector on the USB. thats why i write to /dev/sdd
and not /dev/sdd1