Preparing Installation Media

USB Flash Drive

You can install Oracle Linux by using a boot image on portable devices such as a USB flash drive or an SD card, if the system's firmware can boot from those devices.

To create a bootable drive, use the dd or xorriso-dd-target command. Or, use a separate third-party utility to write the ISO image to a drive. See, for example, Create USB Installation Media for Oracle Linux with Fedora Media Writer.

Caution:

This procedure destroys any existing data on the drive. Ensure that you specify the correct device name for the USB drive on the system.

Insert a USB flash drive into an Oracle Linux system.
Use the xorriso-dd-target command to list available block devices and to identify likely candidate devices for use.
```
xorriso-dd-target -with_sudo -list_all
```
The command presents a password prompt as it uses sudo to access all devices on the system. Output similar to the following is displayed:
```
sda : YES : usb+ has_vfat+ : SanDisk Cruzer Switch 
nvme0n1 : NO  : not_usb- has_vfat+ has_xfs- has_crypto_LUKS- has_swap- :  PM9A1 NVMe Samsung 512GB 
```
The command identifies removable block devices with disposable content. In the example output, the command identified a USB device at /dev/sda, that could be used to write an ISO image.
Ensure that any file systems on the device are unmounted.
For example, to unmount the first partition on /dev/sda:
```
sudo umount /dev/sda1
```

Write the contents of the ISO image file to the USB device.

Do one of the following to write the ISO image file to the USB device:

Use the dd command directly:

sudo dd if=./full_image.iso of=/dev/sda bs=512k

Use the xorriso-dd-target command to guide you through this process:

xorriso-dd-target -with_sudo -plug_test -DO_WRITE -image_file ./full_image.iso

The command guides you through testing for appropriate devices and finally prompts you to select and approve writing to the device. Example output follows:

sudo /bin/lsblk seems ok.

Caused by option -plug_test: Attempt to find the desired device
by watching it appear after being plugged in.

Step 1:
Please make sure that the desired target device is plugged _out_ now.
If it is currently plugged in, make sure to unmount all its fileystems
and then unplug it.
Press the Enter key when ready.

Found and noted as _not_ desired:  nvme0n1  

Step 2:
Please plug in the desired target device and then press the Enter key.

Waiting up to 10 seconds for a new device to be listed .... found: sda
Now waiting 5 seconds to let it settle .........
Found and noted as desired device:  sda

sda : YES : usb+ has_vfat+ : SanDisk Cruzer Switch 

Step 3:
Last chance to abort. Enter the word 'yes' to start REAL WRITING.
yes
Looking for mount points of sda:
Performing:
  sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/'sda' bs=512 seek='30595071' count=1 status=none
  sudo /bin/dd if='OracleLinux.iso' of=/dev/'sda' bs=1M status=progress oflag=dsync ; sync

The USB flash drive is now ready to be used to boot a system and start the installation.

DVD or CD

Because of storage limits, optical media such as CDs or DVDs might not have capacity to accommodate most installation ISO images. However they can be used to store the boot ISO image.

Insert an empty recordable CD or DVD into the CD or DVD writer device.
Open a terminal and use cdrecord to write the ISO file to the device.
To write the downloaded ISO image file to a CD or DVD, use a command such as cdrecord, for example:
```
sudo cdrecord -v -eject speed=16 dev=/dev/sr0 file_name.iso
```
To display the device that corresponds to the CD or DVD writer, use the cdrecord --devices command.

The CD or DVD is now ready to be used to boot a system and start the installation.

Network Drive

You can copy installation media to a network drive to use as part of a network installation process. For the network drive, the image that you download can either be the full ISO image or the boot image. The network server can be of any type, for example NFS, or a web server.

To copy the ISO image to a network drive, follow these steps:

Mount the ISO image to a location on a system that has access to the network drive location.
For example you can loopback mount an ISO to the /mnt path as follows:
```
sudo mount -o loop full_image.iso /mnt
```
Copy the contents of the ISO image to the network drive location.
```
sudo cp -a -T path-to-mounted-ISO-image network_dir
```
For example, if you're using a web server to host the network drive, and have an ISO image mounted at /mnt, you might run the following command:
```
sudo cp -a -T /mnt /var/www/html/OSimage/OL10
```
Unmount the ISO image after you have finished copying the contents.
For example, run:
```
sudo unmount /mnt
```

Using a network drive is part of network installation, which requires you to build a network configuration that provides network installation functionality. For details, see Creating a Network Installation Setup.

Driver Update Disk

A Driver Update Disk (DUD) provides a mechanism for delivering updated device drivers during system installation. On some systems, hardware might not be fully supported for an Oracle Linux release. In these cases, a DUD might be released later to help install Oracle Linux on newer hardware.

DUDs are released as modules and become available for previously unsupported hardware. The DUD is provided in the form of an ISO and is available in the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud or through MyOracle Support.

The DUD must be written to appropriate media or copied to another storage device before it can be used for installation.

You can prepare a DUD in the same way that you prepare other installation media, by copying it to a USB, CD, or DVD device, or by storing it in an accessible network location. See Preparing Installation Media for more information.