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I downloaded Ubuntu 14.04.2 - desktop. When I try to open the file, I have the following error message: 

NO MOUNTABLE FILE SYSTEM.

What should I do to solve this problem?

LiveWireBT
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Denise Gomes
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4 Answers4

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First in order to create a bootable USB on mac for Ubuntu you should follow these instructions I took from the Arch Wiki:

To be able to use dd on your USB device on a Mac you have to do some special maneuvers. First of all insert your usb device, OS X will automount it, and in Terminal.app run: diskutil list

Figure out what your USB device is called with mount or sudo dmesg | tail (e.g. /dev/disk1) and unmount the partitions on the device (i.e., /dev/disk1s1) while keeping the device proper (i.e., /dev/disk1):

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Now we can continue in accordance with the instructions above (but, if you are using the OS X dd, use /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk, and use bs=1m. rdisk means "raw disk" and is much faster on OS X, and bs=1m indicates a 1 MB block size).

# dd if=image.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

20480+0 records in
20480+0 records out
167772160 bytes transferred in 220.016918 secs (762542 bytes/sec)

It is probably a good idea to eject your drive before physical removal at this point:

diskutil eject /dev/disk1

After that install Refind as that should make booting into the USB installation of Ubuntu easy and then reboot your computer and select the USB.

A.B.
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The Intelligent Human
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1

When I try to open the file

This is not an application or software installer and this is not how you install Ubuntu. You need to create a bootable medium, boot it, and then you can install Ubuntu. Macs with up to date firmware should behave like standard UEFI computers with Windows 8 or later, which means just follow the standard instructions. If they work, good for you, if not, follow karel's answer.

Community
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LiveWireBT
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0

It seems Ubuntu ISOs have some partition map shenanigans that make them unreadable using regular OS X tools. At least that's true for Ubuntu 15.10 and Mac OS X 10.8, but there are reports on the web regarding other versions too.

The only tool I was able to find that can successfully burn a Ubuntu ISO to USB is UNetbootin. Make sure to prepare the USB drive first with Disk Utility, choosing 1 Partition, GUID partition table (in the Options button) and MS-DOS FAT partition type.

I have not tried the resulting USB on my Mac, but it installed cleanly on a Windows PC, while no other method worked, including dd in the Terminal.

Tobia
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ISO or DMG should be created from a valid file system. For instance:

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 GB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage FER_PEN                 3.7 GB     disk3s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk3s3
/dev/disk4 (external, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS FER_PEN                +3.5 GB     disk4
                                 Logical Volume on disk3s2
                                 96D32D40-6F89-41A0-AA56-89D904A15295
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

The only valid filesystem is Apple_HFS, thus I issue:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk4 of=pen.dmg bs=1m
Freeman
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