Our favorite way, and the fastest method, for getting up and running with Kali Linux is to run it “live” from a USB drive. This method has several advantages:
Make the Ubuntu USB Drive Persistent To make it possible to install applications and save settings on a live USB drive you need to make it persistent. Ubuntu looks for a file called casper-rw in the root partition in order to provide persistence. May 11, 2016 So, I have an iso file I need to burn to a usb drive for use with a windows computer. It's a bootible iso image that can be burned to a usb stick. I need to burn it to a usb drive for use with a windows computer. I've looked all over the internet for software that can be used to burn an iso image to a usb drive on a mac, but haven't been successful.
It’s non-destructive — it makes no changes to the host system’s hard drive or installed OS, and to go back to normal operations, you simply remove the “Kali Live” USB drive and restart the system.
It’s portable — you can carry Kali Linux in your pocket and have it running in minutes on an available system
It’s customizable — you can roll your own custom Kali Linux ISO image and put it onto a USB drive using the same procedures
It’s potentially persistent — with a bit of extra effort, you can configure your Kali Linux “live” USB drive to have persistent storage, so the data you collect is saved across reboots
In order to do this, we first need to create a bootable USB drive which has been set up from an ISO image of Kali Linux.
What You’ll Need
A verified copy of the appropriate ISO image of the latest Kali build image for the system you’ll be running it on: see the details on downloading official Kali Linux images.
If you’re running under Windows, you’ll also need to download the Win32 Disk Imager utility. On Linux and OS X, you can use the dd command, which is pre-installed on those platforms.
A USB thumb drive, 4GB or larger. (Systems with a direct SD card slot can use an SD card with similar capacity. The procedure is identical.)
Kali Linux Live USB Install Procedure
The specifics of this procedure will vary depending on whether you’re doing it on a Windows, Linux, or OS X system.
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on Windows
Plug your USB drive into an available USB port on your Windows PC, note which drive designator (e.g. “F:”) it uses once it mounts, and launch the Win32 Disk Imager software you downloaded.
Choose the Kali Linux ISO file to be imaged and verify that the USB drive to be overwritten is the correct one. Click the “Write” button.
Once the imaging is complete, safely eject the USB drive from the Windows machine. You can now use the USB device to boot into Kali Linux.
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on Linux
Creating a bootable Kali Linux USB key in a Linux environment is easy. Once you’ve downloaded and verified your Kali ISO file, you can use the dd command to copy it over to your USB stick using the following procedure. Note that you’ll need to be running as root, or to execute the dd command with sudo. The following example assumes a Linux Mint 17.1 desktop — depending on the distro you’re using, a few specifics may vary slightly, but the general idea should be very similar.
WARNING: Although the process of imaging Kali Linux onto a USB drive is very easy, you can just as easily overwrite a disk drive you didn’t intend to with dd if you do not understand what you are doing, or if you specify an incorrect output path. Double-check what you’re doing before you do it, it’ll be too late afterwards.
Consider yourself warned.
First, you’ll need to identify the device path to use to write the image to your USB drive. Without the USB drive inserted into a port, execute the command
at a command prompt in a terminal window (if you don’t use elevated privileges with fdisk, you won’t get any output). You’ll get output that will look something (not exactly) like this, showing a single drive — “/dev/sda” — containing three partitions (/dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and /dev/sda5):
Now, plug your USB drive into an available USB port on your system, and run the same command, “sudo fdisk -l” a second time. Now, the output will look something (again, not exactly) like this, showing an additional device which wasn’t there previously, in this example “/dev/sdb”, a 16GB USB drive:
Proceed to (carefully!) image the Kali ISO file on the USB device. The example command below assumes that the ISO image you’re writing is named “kali-linux-2017.1-amd64.iso” and is in your current working directory. The blocksize parameter can be increased, and while it may speed up the operation of the dd command, it can occasionally produce unbootable USB drives, depending on your system and a lot of different factors. The recommended value, “bs=512k”, is conservative and reliable.
Imaging the USB drive can take a good amount of time, over ten minutes or more is not unusual, as the sample output below shows. Be patient!
The dd command provides no feedback until it’s completed, but if your drive has an access indicator, you’ll probably see it flickering from time to time. The time to dd the image across will depend on the speed of the system used, USB drive itself, and USB port it’s inserted into. Once dd has finished imaging the drive, it will output something that looks like this:
5823+1 records in 5823+1 records out 3053371392 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 746.211 s, 4.1 MB/s
That’s it, really! You can now boot into a Kali Live / Installer environment using the USB device.
Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on OS X
OS X is based on UNIX, so creating a bootable Kali Linux USB drive in an OS X environment is similar to doing it on Linux. Once you’ve downloaded and verified your chosen Kali ISO file, you use dd to copy it over to your USB stick.
WARNING: Although the process of imaging Kali on a USB drive is very easy, you can just as easily overwrite a disk drive you didn’t intend to with dd if you do not understand what you are doing, or if you specify an incorrect output path. Double-check what you’re doing before you do it, it’ll be too late afterwards.
Consider yourself warned.
Without the USB drive plugged into the system, open a Terminal window, and type the command diskutil list at the command prompt.
You will get a list of the device paths (looking like /dev/rdisk0, /dev/rdisk1, etc.) of the disks mounted on your system, along with information on the partitions on each of the disks.
Plug in your USB device to your Apple computer’s USB port and run the command diskutil list a second time. Your USB drive’s path will most likely be the last one. In any case, it will be one which wasn’t present before. In this example, you can see that there is now a /dev/disk6 which wasn’t previously present.
Unmount the drive (assuming, for this example, the USB stick is /dev/disk6 — do not simply copy this, verify the correct path on your own system!):
Proceed to (carefully!) image the Kali ISO file on the USB device. The following command assumes that your USB drive is on the path /dev/disk6, and you’re in the same directory with your Kali Linux ISO, which is named “kali-linux-2017.1-amd64.iso”:
Note: Increasing the blocksize (bs) will speed up the write progress, but will also increase the chances of creating a bad USB stick. Using the given value on OS X has produced reliable images consistently.
Imaging the USB drive can take a good amount of time, over half an hour is not unusual, as the sample output below shows. Be patient!
The dd command provides no feedback until it’s completed, but if your drive has an access indicator, you’ll probably see it flickering from time to time. The time to dd the image across will depend on the speed of the system used, USB drive itself, and USB port it’s inserted into. Once dd has finished imaging the drive, it will output something that looks like this:
2911+1 records in 2911+1 records out 3053371392 bytes transferred in2151.132182 secs (1419425 bytes/sec)
And that’s it! You can now boot into a Kali Live / Installer environment using the USB device.
To boot from an alternate drive on an OS X system, bring up the boot menu by pressing the Option key immediately after powering on the device and select the drive you want to use.
For more information, see Apple’s knowledge base.
From the makers of UNetbootin: HabitLab, a tool to help you waste less time online (for Chrome)
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UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions without burning a CD.
You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file.
Features
UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive
It loads distributions either by downloading a ISO (CD image) files for you, or by using an ISO file you've already downloaded.
Using Unetbootin
Select an ISO file or a distribution to download, select a target drive (USB Drive or Hard Disk), then reboot once done. If your USB drive doesn't show up, reformat it as FAT32.
If you used the 'USB Drive' install mode: After rebooting, boot from the USB drive. On PCs, this usually involves pressing a button such as Esc or F12 immediately after you turn on your computer, while on Macs, you should hold the Option key before OSX boots.
If you used the 'Hard Disk' install mode: After rebooting, select the UNetbootin entry from the Windows Boot Menu.
Supported Distributions
UNetbootin has built-in support for automatically downloading and loading the following distributions, though installing other distributions is also supported:
UNetbootin can also be used to load various system utilities, including:
Installing Other Distributions Using UNetbootin
Download and run UNetbootin, then select the 'disk image' option and supply it with an ISO (CD image).
UNetbootin doesn't use distribution-specific rules for making your live USB drive, so most Linux ISO files should load correctly using this option. However, not all distributions support booting from USB, and some others require extra boot options or other modifications before they can boot from USB drives, so these ISO files will not work as-is. Also, ISO files for non-Linux operating systems have a different boot mechanism, so don't expect them to work either.
FAQs
Distribution X isn't on the list of supported distributions, will it work?
» Maybe, see Installing Other Distributions Using UNetbootin.
UNetbootin isn't able to download the distribution, what should I do?
Download the ISO straight from the website, then provide it to UNetbootin via the diskimage option.
My USB stick isn't booting, what should I do?
Reformat the USB drive as FAT32, then use UNetbootin again to put your distribution on the USB stick.
My USB stick/hard drive isn't detected, what should I do?
Reformat the USB drive as FAT32, then use UNetbootin again. If it still isn't showing up, use the targetdrive command line option.
How do I use UNetbootin from the command line?
» See UNetbootin Command Line Options.
How does UNetbootin work, and what does it do?
» See How UNetbootin Works.
» See USB Drive and Hard Disk Install Modes.
Where can I report bugs, submit patches, etc?
First, make sure you are using the latest version available on this website.
» See Github Issues to file a bug report.
» See Github Pull Requests to submit a patch.
Does UNetbootin have any spyware, viruses, trojans, or other malware?
No; though some anti-virus products may raise 'Trojan.generic' warnings due to the auto-uninstall feature, these are false positives. Just make sure you obtain UNetbootin from this site, not some shady third-party source. If you're absolutely paranoid, you can check the source code and compile it yourself.
What translations are available, and how can I use them?
A number of translations are included in the latest UNetbootin release. See the Translations Page for the status of each.
If a translation corresponding to your system's native language has already been included into UNetbootin, it should automatically load the corresponding translation. Alternatively, you can force the language to use via the lang=es command-line option, where you substitute es with the the 2-letter ISO 639-1 code for your language.
Can I help translate?
If you'd like to help translate this website, join the project on Transifex, then edit translations either on this website or on Transifex.
If you'd like to help translate the UNetbootin program itself, please use Launchpad Translations. If you are new to Launchpad, you will first have to join the corresponding Ubuntu Translators group for the language you intend to translate. For information on using the Launchpad Translations system, see the translations help page.
» See UNetbootin Translations
Removal Instructions (Applicable only to Hard Disk installs)
If using Windows, UNetbootin should prompt you to remove it the next time you boot into Windows. Alternatively, you can remove it via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
If using Linux, re-run the UNetbootin executable (with root priveledges), and press OK when prompted to uninstall.
Removal is only required if you used the 'Hard Drive' installation mode; to remove the bootloader from a USB drive, back up its contents and reformat it.
Uninstalling UNetbootin simply removes the UNetbootin entry from your boot menu; if you installed an operating system to a partition using UNetbootin, removing UNetbootin will not remove the OS.
To manually remove a Linux installation, you will have to restore the Windows bootloader using 'fixmbr' from a recovery CD, and use Parted Magic to delete the Linux partition and expand the Windows partition.
Where's the source code, and how can I compile or modify it?
Source code is on Github, though you may prefer a tarball of the latest release.
» See Compiling UNetbootin.
» See UNetbootin Command Line Options.
» See Building a UNetbootin Plugin.
» See Using a UNetbootin Plugin.
» See Building a Custom UNetbootin Version.
» See List of Custom UNetbootin Versions and Plugins.
License
UNetbootin was created and written by Geza Kovacs (Github: gkovacs, Launchpad: gezakovacs, contact info).
Translators are listed on the translations page.
UNetbootin is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2 or above. Site materials, documentation, screenshots, and logos are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0.
Other open-source projects from the creators of UNetbootin
HabitLab
A Chrome extension to help you waste less time online (on sites like Facebook, Youtube, etc) by experimenting with different interventions (news feed blockers, comment hiders, and more) to find the ones that work best for you.