Create Fedora or CentOS USB boot media with an ISO image file and dd on Linux

A fun fact that a lot of users still aren’t aware of, is that you can create Fedora and CentOS bootable media (a bootable USB stick) using the DVD/CD ISO image, and using the linux dd command.

So if you have an existing and running Linux install, you can use this method to quickly write an ISO file to a USB stick!

Here’s How!

1. Get your USB stick handy, make sure it’s big enough to store the ISO file you want to download.
2. Download your preferred ISO DVD or CD Image for Installation from CentOS or Fedora.
3. Connect your USB stick, open a terminal session and run the following command to identify the device name of the USB stick (mine was sdb for /dev/sdb):

   [root@StephenW-X1 ~]# dmesg | grep removable
   [  171.890670] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

4. Issue the following command to write the ISO image to the USB stick. Change the input filename, and output device name to reflect your own.

   [root@StephenW-X1 Downloads]# dd if=Fedora-Workstation-netinst-x86_64-28-1.1.iso of=/dev/sdb
   1193984+0 records in
   1193984+0 records out
   611319808 bytes (611 MB, 583 MiB) copied, 13.6777 s, 44.7 MB/s

5. Your done!

Please Note:

• Choosing the wrong /dev/sd[x] device can case you to write the ISO file to your hard drive, or another hard drive in your system. Make sure you select the right device name. If you’re unsure, don’t run the command.
• You can also use the “Fedora Media Writer for Windows” available here: https://getfedora.org/fmw/FedoraMediaWriter-win32-4.1.1.exe to write an ISO image to USB if you’re running Windows.