How to USB creation

Simple method and supported any system

This tool is available on Windows, MacOS and GNU/Linux. The tool is graphical and extremely intuitive. It is a simple and efficient method to create a bootable USB stick for GNU/Linux system quickly.

Method with CLI

Suppose here that the command sudo fdisk -l tells us that our USB key is the device sdb.

So we will type this command:

sudo dd if=iso_path/iso_file.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

At the end of the process, you will have a bootable USB stick.

Other method or tools

You can use other tools or methods to create your Kaisen Live bootable USB drive, however, note that the two methods mentioned above have been tested and approved by our team. Some problems have been reported to us following the use of Rufus, in particular for installation on certain configurations.

Create live USB key with persistence

Prerequisite

WARNING: A USB flash drive configured to support live persistent will not work with Apple hardware, probably due to their specific BIOS.

We recommend that you have at least a 64GB USB drive to take full advantage of this feature. Check with the command sudo fdisk -l what your key is called. Here we will assume that our USB stick is /dev/sdb.

USB key with persistence creation

This documentation was made with ISO SR but also works with KDE, LXQT, MATE and XFCE.
Make sure you are in the same folder as the ISO to do all this!!! The dd command will erase your entire device, make sure you have backed up the important content.

Create a bootable Kaisen USB drive with the following command:

sudo dd if=kaisenlinuxrolling2.2-amd64-SR.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

Normally two partitions were created by dd. You can check this with the sudo fdisk -l command. You need to create a third to add persistence to it.

To do this, type the following commands (always in the same folder where the ISO is):

end=50GiB (if key is 64GiB, for security we will put the key ending at 50GiB plus the size of the ISO so 4GiB)
read start _ <<< $(du -bcm kaisenlinuxrolling2.2-amd64-SR.iso | tail -1); echo $start
sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ${start}MiB $end

You should now have 3 partitions on your /dev/sdb device.

Then do this for create filesystems and partition label:
The mkfs.ext4 command below will ask a question (on the size of the blocks). Just press enter to use the default settings (not affected here).

sudo mkfs.ext4 -L persistence /dev/sdb3
sudo e2label /dev/sdb3 persistence

To take into account this new persistence partition, we should have a file named persistence.conf at the root of this partition with in this file marked: / union

We are going to proceed like this:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/persistence
sudo mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/persistence
echo "/ union" | sudo tee /mnt/persistence/persistence.conf
sudo umount /mnt/persistence

Your key is now ready!

Restart a live Kaisen with the persistence option enabled. To test that the persistence is functional, for example change the theme of the graphical interface then restart your live session by always choosing "persistence". If the theme you modified has been kept instead of the default one, the persistence is functional.

Create live USB key with encrypted persistence

Prerequisite

WARNING: A USB flash drive configured to support live persistent will not work with Apple hardware, probably due to their specific BIOS.

USB key with encrypted persistence creation

Create a bootable Kaisen USB drive with the following command:

sudo dd if=kaisenlinuxrolling2.2-amd64-SR.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

Normally two partitions were created by dd. You can check this with the sudo fdisk -l command. You need to create a third to add persistence to it.

To do this, type the following commands (always in the same folder where the ISO is):

end=50GiB (if key is 64GiB, for security we will put the key ending at 50GiB plus the size of the ISO so 4GiB)
read start _ <<< $(du -bcm kaisenlinuxrolling2.2-amd64-SR.iso | tail -1); echo $start
sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ${start}MiB $end

You should now have 3 partitions on your /dev/sdb device.
WARNING: do not forget the passphrase to unlock the partition, otherwise you will have to completely redo your key and your data cannot be recovered. You have been warned.

sudo cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdb3
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb3 kaisen-usb-persistent

Then do this for create filesystems and partition label: The mkfs.ext4 command below will ask a question (on the size of the blocks). Just press enter to use the default settings (not affected here).

sudo mkfs.ext4 -L persistence /dev/mapper/kaisen-usb-persistent
sudo e2label /dev/mapper/kaisen-usb-persistent persistence

To take into account this new persistence partition, we should have a file named persistence.conf at the root of this partition with in this file marked: / union

We are going to proceed like this:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/kaisen-usb-persistent
sudo mount /dev/mapper/kaisen-usb-persistent /mnt/kaisen-usb-persistent
echo "/ union" | sudo tee /mnt/kaisen-usb-persistent/persistence.conf
sudo umount /dev/mapper/kaisen-usb-persistent

Let's close the encrypted channel:

sudo cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/kaisen-usb-persistent

Your key is now ready!

Restart a live Kaisen with the encrypted persistence option enabled. To test that the persistence is functional, for example change the theme of the graphical interface then restart your live session by always choosing "encrypted persistence". If the theme you modified has been kept instead of the default one, encrypted persistence is functional.
Caution, the keyboard will be in QWERTY.

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