usb bootable stick

[Tim]

<J.Witvliet at mindef.nl> wrote:
>> You wrote thatyou first mount the raw sdb device, and then do the dd
>> to the raw device.
>> What is the point of mounting in the first place?
>> That is useless and even dangerous, as the system _might_ want to try
>> to write to the mounted sdb1 filesystem.
>> Just skip the mounting.

Ranjan Maitra:
> In my experience with Fedora (only), I have found that mounting is
> essential. Otherwise it writes to the mount point, but not the device.

Why would anyone think that a command like:

  dd  if=boot.iso  of=/dev/sdb  bs=8M

Is going to write to anywhere else than /dev/sdb?

In general, trying to do a direct write to a device, while it's mounted
on the filesystem, is inherently risky.  You stand a very good chance
that the mounted filesystem is going to stomp over the top of your raw
write.  The only way I could see it *not* stomping over it, is if you
yanked the USB drive out without dismounting it (another stupid thing to
do).

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
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Windows (TM) [Typhoid Mary]. They refuse to believe that there's
anything wrong with it, but everyone else knows Windows is a disease
that spreads.