NOTE: This worked for the RescueCD.iso file but might need some tweeking for other types of live CDs.
Here we are assuming that the USB disk is: /dev/sdc
– Make sure the single stick partition is:
– the partition is tagged as bootable.(use fdisk for that)
– formatted as VFAT32
mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n MYLABEL /dev/sdc1
– run the command (install-mbr is part of the Debian package ‘mbr’)
install-mbr /dev/sdc
– Get the .iso file (normally used to burn a CD)
Good example is RescueCD from:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/files/sysresccd-x86/1.3.4/systemrescuecd-x86-1.3.4.iso/download
– Mount the iso file in loop format:
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -o loop /path/of/file.iso /mnt/iso
– Mount the USB stick.
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb
– Copy everything from iso to usb
cp -rf /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb/
– If it exists, delete the directory /mnt/usb/syslinux
– Rename some of the components
mv /mnt/usb/isolinux/isolinux.cfg /mnt/usb/isolinux/syslinux.cfg
mv /mnt/usb/isolinux /mnt/usb/syslinux
– Unmount the USB stick
umount /mnt/usb
– Make the USB stick bootable
syslinux /dev/sdc1
sync
The stick is ready to boot.