It is worth noting that I had to quit Disk Utility before Etcher would work. Otherwise I got an immediate error that something had gone wrong. Quit Disk Utility -> worked immediately.
Maybe if I had just highlighted another disk? But some kind of note would be good.
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(1) On macos Catalina, the “Scheme” option in the disk utility is no longer available.
(2) with the bootable USB stick inserted, the choices for startup disk include TWO orange EFI disks.
DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS.
You should NEVER EVER run anything from “unidentified developers” - Apple force developers to identify themselves and pay a mere $100 to submit their apps for signing, and Apple CHECK THEIR CODE IS NOT MALICIOUS before allowing it to run.
Everyone trustworthy - especially huge people like Ubuntu - have no problems with that.
Anyone who refuses to do that IS COMPLETELY UNTRUSTWORTHY - they don’t care about your security, they don’t care that everyone else can infect their work with malware, and more-often-than-not, these people ARE DISTRIBUTING MALWARE.
This entire article needs to be deleted or re-written - it’s totally unacceptable in 2021 that Ubuntu is promoting such dangerously unsafe computing practices!
Could this please be updated or could some documentation be put up about how to make the USB persistent? The guide works excellent, but I can’t find any official documentation on how to make the USB persistent. For a distro as big as Ubuntu, I would have liked to see some documentation on this. Thanks!
I tried making an Ubuntu install USB using balenaEtcher and macOS 11. All it gave me was an unusable USB thumb drive that could not be recognized or re-formatted. I had to throw it away. I ended up making my install USB using Rufus on a Windows computer at work. In my experience, Etcher was garbage.
Thanks for the information.
I could not get the USB to work after following this tutorial. I did not try out usbimager tho. Running OSX you can create a bootable USB stick with a couple of simple lines in the terminal:
First download the iso image
Convert to img.dmg file (.dmg suffix is added automatically
hdiutil convert ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso -format UDRW -o ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.img
Run diskutil
diskutil list
Insert USB stick and run diskutil again (to verify which device is the USB)
diskutil list
Unmount USB
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Add image to USB
sudo dd if=ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.img.dmg of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
Eject USB
diskutil eject /dev/disk2
This bricked my USB. It’s no longer formattable by Disk Utility or recognizable on Windows. Definitely not bootable.
The above step is impossible (no Scheme options) most of the time. Users need at least to unmount the disk, and probably to destroy the current BIOS scheme in order for that option to show up.
e.g.
diskutil unmount /Volumes/PFSENSE/
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 count=16
STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO DISABLE THEIR SECURITY and run any old unsigned apps - there is a VERY GOOD REASON why Apple block the lazy idiots who release unsigned apps (and block viruses, malware, ransomware, and other malicious code) - if any developer is too tight to shell out the $100 to buy a certificate and IDENTIFY THEMSELVES to Apple, and allow their code to be check for evil, then those developers need to blacklisted. There’s hundreds of legit and safe ways to make disk images, and putting all your users at dire risk is NOT THE ONE YOU SHOULD BE USING.
There is no reason whatsoever to install Etcher, or any unsigned app, or indeed anything at all - I’ve just confirmed that the inbuilt “dd” command works perfectly fine to boot Ubuntu on my mac:-
sudo dd if=ubuntu-21.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=8225280
Someone needs to update these old instructions ASAP, so that you’re not forcing all your users to do sketchy unsafe things and run insecure products…
We should advice people to use a 4GB thumb drive not 2 GB
Etcher is only available for x86-64. Seems like arm64 is not a supported architecture.
Even a 4GB USB Drive doesn’t seem to be big enough. Should advise for an 8GB drive.
I have a Mac Ventura and it didn’t work for me either. I followed the instructions to a T. Was formating the USB instructions done correctly? I restarted my computer holding the option button - the USB never turned yellow nor showed.
Yes, the latest LTS version of Ubuntu Desktop (at this time Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS) requires more than 4 GB. The ISO file for Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS is 4,93 GB
Wanted to say thanks to the original writer for this document. Just used it to create a bootable USB on a Mac Mini m2 and it worked flawlessly for me. Thank you!
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