Create installation media for Ubuntu

These steps will walk you through creating a bootable Ubuntu image SD Card or USB flash drive.

WARNING:

This will erase any existing content on the removable drive!

View instructions for: Ubuntu, Windows, or macOS.

On Ubuntu

Download the Ubuntu image for your device in your `Downloads` folder
Insert your SD card or USB flash drive
Identify its address by opening the "Disks" application and look for the "Device" line. If the line is in the /dev/mmcblk0p1 format, then your drive address is: /dev/mmcblk0. If it is in the /dev/sdb1 format, then the address is /dev/sdb
Unmount it by right-clicking its icon in the launcher bar, the eject icon in a file manager or the square icon in the "Disks" application
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to copy the image to your removable drive
If the Ubuntu image file you have downloaded ends with an `.xz` file extension, run:
```
xzcat ~/Downloads/<image-file.xz> | sudo dd of=<drive address> bs=32M
```

Else, run:

sudo dd if=~/Downloads/<image-file> of=<drive address> bs=32M

Then, run the sync command to finalize the process
You can now eject your removable drive. You are ready to install Ubuntu on your device ›

On Windows

Download the Ubuntu image for your device in your `Downloads` folder
If the Ubuntu image file you have downloaded ends with an .xz file extension, you will need to extract it first. To do so, you might have to install an archive extractor software, like 7-zip
Insert your SD card or USB flash drive
Download and install Win32DiskImager, then launch it
Find out where your removable drive is mounted by opening a File Explorer window to check which mount point the drive is listed under.

Here is an example of an SD card listed under E:
In order to flash your card with the Ubuntu image, Win32DiskImager will need 2 elements:
1. an Image File: navigate to your Downloads folder and select the image you have just extracted
2. a Device: the location of your SD card. Select the drive on which your SD card is mounted
When ready click on Write and wait for the process to complete.
You can now eject your removable drive. You are ready to install Ubuntu on your device ›

On macOS

Download the Ubuntu image for your device in your Downloads folder
Insert your SD card or USB flash drive
Open a terminal window (Go to Application » Utilities, you will find the Terminal app there), then run this command:
```
diskutil list
```

In the results, identify your removable drive device address, it will probably look like an entry like the ones below:

/dev/disk0
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
/dev/disk2
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *428.8 GB   disk1
Logical Volume on disk0s2
E2E7C215-99E4-486D-B3CC-DAB8DF9E9C67
Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk3
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *7.9 GB     disk3
1:                 DOS_FAT_32 NO NAME                 7.9 GB     disk3s1

Your removable drive must be DOS_FAT_32 formatted. In this example, /dev/disk3 is the drive address of an 8GB SD card.

Unmount your SD card with this command:
```
diskutil unmountDisk <drive address>
```
When successful, you should see a message similar to this:
```
Unmount of all volumes on <drive address> was successful
```

You can now copy the image to the SD card:

sudo sh -c 'gunzip -c ~/Downloads/<image file> | sudo dd of=<drive address> bs=32m'

When finished you will see this message:

3719+1 records in
3719+1 records out
3899999744 bytes transferred in 642.512167 secs (6069924 bytes/sec)

You can now eject your removable drive. You are ready to install Ubuntu on your device ›

Learn more

You can start your Ubuntu Core journey by either reading or asking.

Read the docs

Visit ask.ubuntu.com

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