blob: 4a74e406b14cedeed91ae4e6022d1987a2dfc902 (
plain) (
blame)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
|
<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">
<title>Booting from a USB Drive</title>
<para>For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from
a USB stick. You can use the <command>dd</command> utility to write the image:
<command>dd if=<replaceable>path-to-image</replaceable>
of=<replaceable>/dev/sdb</replaceable></command>. Be careful about specifying the
correct drive; you can use the <command>lsblk</command> command to get a list of
block devices. If you're on OS X you can run <command>diskutil list</command>
to see the list of devices; the device you'll use for the USB must be ejected
before writing the image.</para>
<para>The <command>dd</command> utility will write the image verbatim to the drive,
making it the recommended option for both UEFI and non-UEFI installations. For
non-UEFI installations, you can alternatively use
<link xlink:href="http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/">unetbootin</link>. If you
cannot use <command>dd</command> for a UEFI installation, you can also mount the
ISO, copy its contents verbatim to your drive, then either:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO
(visible with the blkid command), or</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Edit <filename>loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf</filename> on the drive
and change the <literal>root=</literal> field in the <literal>options</literal>
line to point to your drive (see the documentation on <literal>root=</literal>
in <link xlink:href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt">
the kernel documentation</link> for more details).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>If you want to load the contents of the ISO to ram after bootin
(So you can remove the stick after bootup) you can append the parameter
<literal>copytoram</literal>to the <literal>options</literal> field.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
|