Solaris

I downloaded the XStreamOS (which descends from Solaris) .usb installer. I.e. it is a .usb file, which I now have on a USB drive. I tried plugging it into the computer I want to install it on and rebooting, but it did not do anything. What is the .usb file for?

There's not a "usb" kind of file, I think they named it "usb" just to differentiate it from their ISO image. UNIX plays fast and loose with file extensions since they have zero meaning to it.

I think it's a disk image, which would need to be dumped raw onto the USB device. This is similar to how a CDROM containing "disk image.iso" isn't the same thing as the cdrom that burning "disk image.iso" to disk would create.

Fair warning, this would wipe out your USB drive's existing contents and partition information!

How to do so depends on your system.

Thank you, Corona. I could perform the dumping from either a Windows or a Linux machine. The machine I want to install Solaris on is a Dell x86_64. I am not familiar with "dumping raw". Is there a more formal term I can search on? Or, can you, or someone else, tell me how or point me to where I can find out how to do this?

It involves raw disk access, ignoring all partition layout -- just starting at sector zero and going all the way to the end. In Linux this is easy, in Windows it's a pain.

If you read the data from a compact disk beginning to end this way, and saved it to file, you get an ISO file. No translation is necessary, the data started that way.

Code:

dd bs=4M if=/dev/cdrom of=myfile.iso

You may need root access to get at the device.

If you read all the data in a USB thumb drive from beginning to end and saved it to file, you'd get a disk image:

Code:

dd bs=4M if=/dev/mythumbdrive of=myusbdrive.usb

You will definitely need root access to get at a raw disk device.

What "kind" of image depends on what it was formatted as. Unlike a CDROM, USB storage devices are just raw block devices which can hold anything and everything. The only difference between a disk formatted as GPT and one formatted as a Solaris partition type is what data is contained in those raw blocks. If you back up the contents, you've backed up literally everything. There is no difference between a thumbdrive image, a hard drive image, an SSD image -- it's all just blocks which make as much sense on any of them.

To put an image back into the device, you'd reverse the process:

Code:

dd bs=4M if=myfile.usb of=/dev/myusbdrive

You will definitely need raw disk access to do this, which is dangerous, because:

Moderator's Comments:

UNIX WILL NOT STOP YOU FROM TRASHING YOUR HARD DRIVE IF YOU GIVE THE WRONG DEVICE. UNIX WILL NOT STOP YOU FROM TRASHING A DEVICE THAT'S IN USE. BE VERY VERY SURE WHICH DEVICE IS WHICH AND THAT YOUR SYSTEM HAS NOT MOUNTED IT.

Giving more specific instructions would mean knowing which linux. if it's ubuntu a lot of effort may be needed to defeat the automounter, etc.