July 11, 2018

Become the Trogdor of ISOs

On MacOS, there exist a few darwin executables that come in handy in regards to making external disks bootable.

1. Download an image you want to install to another local machine
2. Follow these steps within your favorite MacOS terminal application: {% highlight bash %} $ hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o /path/to/target.img /path/to/source.iso $ man hdiutil # Since you probably don't know what you just did... $ mv /path/to/target.img.dmg /path/to/target.img $ # Seems dumb, because it is. MacOS appends .dmg to the target image. $ # Insert your USB drive now! $ diskutil list $ sudo dd if=/path/to/converted.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m $ # Wait for an annoyingly arbitrary amount of time. $ diskutil eject /dev/diskN $ # Actually super important. Ignore any warnings that MacOS throws at you. {% endhighlight %}
3. Plug it into the machine you want to brick install the image to and boot up in that one mode that lets you mess around with the BIOS!