How to write a Chromium OS *.img file to a USB drive?

Question

I have downloaded a Chromium OS *.img file which I want to write to a USB drive, so that I can boot from it.

Is there any tool like YUMI for windows? I tried usb-imagewriter and UNetbootin, but they don't work.

Answer 1

Sites offering such images usually provide instructions:

1. Extract the IMG file from the downloaded archive
2. At the shell, run the following (where sdX is your USB stick and ChromeOS.img is the path to the IMG file you extracted): dd if=ChromeOS.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M
3. Boot from the newly created Chromium OS USB stick!

Known sites:

• http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
• http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/chromium-os/

Answer 2

These Chromium OS images aren't like ISO files and they are also not just simple dumps or images of one filesystem but a complete disk with a partition table. So they won't work with most tools that were made for or expect ISO files.

---

I downloaded an image from chromeos.hexxeh.net and ran gdisk (fdisk for GPT), this is the result:

$ gdisk  -l ChromeOS-Vanilla-4028.0.2013_04_20_1810-r706c4144.img 
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk ChromeOS-Vanilla-4028.0.2013_04_20_1810-r706c4144.img: 4956096 sectors, 2.4 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): C9D28BF1-6984-E240-976E-8D3FADDC2D6E
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 4956062
Partitions will be aligned on 1-sector boundaries
Total free space is 167801 sectors (81.9 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1         2826240         4923391   1024.0 MiB  0700  STATE
   2           20480           53247   16.0 MiB    7F00  KERN-A
   3          286720         2826239   1.2 GiB     7F01  ROOT-A
   4           53248           86015   16.0 MiB    7F00  KERN-B
   5          282624          286719   2.0 MiB     7F01  ROOT-B
   6           16448           16448   512 bytes   7F00  KERN-C
   7           16449           16449   512 bytes   7F01  ROOT-C
   8           86016          118783   16.0 MiB    0700  OEM
   9           16450           16450   512 bytes   7F02  reserved
  10           16451           16451   512 bytes   7F02  reserved
  11              64           16447   8.0 MiB     FFFF  RWFW
  12          249856          282623   16.0 MiB    EF00  EFI-SYSTEM

As posted in another answer by here by Boban, please follow the instructions provided at the sites that offer such files.

Answer 3

Cutting to the chase, after careful consideration of your detailed post, I have concluded that if a respected utility like Unetbootin is no longer working at the same time as another utility with the same purpose is also not working, then there are only two logical conclusions, both of which have equal merit, and will not be solved by installing a third such utility... so even if I knew of one, there'd be absolutely no point in directing you to it. So...

Either: (See update under item 2)

1) The file you downloaded and are attempting to "burn into a USB", is defective and will not work with these utilities. It may have become corrupted during download or it may have been corrupted prior to download. You can try downloading it again or trying again from another source.

or

2) Your Windows has become so corrupt that it will not permit you to use such a utility.

I'm betting on the first option, myself, but if that doesn't work, you may need to depend upon the assistance of a friend who has a somewhat less corrupted computer.

update: Noting the valid comment below, it seems that the file in question was actually not compatible with unetbootin at all. My point that neither unetbootin nor the other related program were working was approaching the actual problem that the file simply could not work with either, but as I had never tried to work with the chrome file, I depended on my relative expertise with unetbootin.

Answer 4

You might like to try Multisystem, which is designed to launch several distributions from one USB drive, but it has the advantage of quite intelligently deciding how to mount an image for booting (GRUB2, Lilo etc). I have found it far superior to unetbootin.

It is very well maintained, and there are frequent updates via apt-get once you have the repositories installed.

You can get the source here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/multisystem/

But you can also install and keep it updated it via Ubuntu package manager by downloading the following, extracting it and running it as root (be warned!):

http://liveusb.info/multisystem/install-depot-multisystem.sh.tar.bz2