[SOLVED] - Make USBKey media for CentOS 8 install media

[warron.french]

I am running Windows 8.1 on my hardware where I am writing this message. I have another machine that does not have CD/DVD drive so I need to be able to create a bootable USBkey for a CentOS 8 installation.

I found this link, https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey; however, it does not specify CentOS 8 in its instructions.

I have two questions:
1. Can I use my Windows 8.1 machine to extract the ISO from my Windows 8.1 OS the following specific ISO (CentOS-8-x86_64-1905-dvd1.iso) so that I can make the USBkey media usable?

2. Can I use the instructions from the link provided?

Question: I do have CentOS 7 and also CentOS 8 running within Oracle VirtualBox. Can I perhaps mount the USBkey in Windows, then to a CentOS virtual machine within Oracle VBox, determine its drive label (/dev/sdX ?) and then use dd to extract the CentOS-8-x86_64-1905-dvd1.iso to that USBkey?

For the proper solution, skip to the very end!

[TrevorH]

The instructions on that link are applicable to any current CentOS version. If using Windows then avoid all the broken utilities listed in that article.

[warron.french]

After using Win32 Disk Imager to extract the CentOS-8-x86_64-1905-dvd1.iso to my USBkey device all I see is the folder EFI on the drive. I also observe that out of an 8.0GB USBkey there is only 464KB free.

Does this make sense?

[Darr247]

Does this make sense?

Unless you have a 3rd-party driver/service, or a GUI like Paragon's Linux File Systems for Windows, yes - it makes sense to not be able to read the stick with windows. If you can boot from it, the first option offered should be to scan itself... if that passes, it should continue booting to the installer.

[warron.french]

Thanks Darr247.

[warron.french]

Update to this post..

Win32DiskImager did not work for me.
However, I discovered that I can extract the CentOS-8.1 (now out) ISO directly to an 8.0 GB flash (thumb) drive using the tool called Etcher.

I tried several times with Win32DiskImager and no matter what I did I kept getting a response from the system that I could not read quickly enough about "isolinuxboot(somethingsomething).... not found," so I gave up on that tool.

I execute a Google Search for the following text: "how to extract Centos 8 ISO to thumbdrive" and it suggested to use the tool and the instructions were also included on this page:- https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-create ... usb-stick/

Finally I succeeded at getting CentOS 8 on this old laptop I was given.

[TrevorH]

Mostly we recommend using the 'dd' command to transfer the iso images to USB. It does not try to be clever and rewrite the contents of it as a fair number of the specialised utilitities do. It has one job and it does it well. It copies data from one thing to another.

[warron.french]

Never heard of 'dd' as a standard offering on Windows.

'dd' is typically available with UNIX or Linux OSes.

[killingthemonkey]

The UNIX philosophy.

...It has one job and it does it well. It copies data from one thing to another.

[warron.french]

@killingthemonkey, so true.