IBM Support

How to create a bootable USB drive for AIX/VIOS

How To


Summary

Learn how to create a bootable USB drive for AIX/VIOS.

Steps

Make a bootable USB as follows:
  1. Plug the USB to the CEC.
     
  2. On the server to which the USB adapter is attached to , run cfgmgr. Since all the appropriate filesets are installed for USB, the cfgmgr command will configure the USB device.
     
  3. Check to see if the USB device is visible:

    ls /dev/usbms*

    You should see all the configured USB devices.
     
  4. Write the iso image by using dd as follows:

    dd if=<cd_iso_image> of=/dev/usbms0 bs=4096

    Note: The image to be written to the USB device will have "Flash" in its image name.  

    The following is an example of the image that can be written to the USB drive:

    Virtual_IO_Server_Base_Install_3.1.0.10_Flash_112018.iso
     
  5. Once the dd completes successfully, you can mount the USB drive as "read only".

    Example: "Mount USB Drive usbms0 as Read Only on mount point USBDRIVE."

    # mount -r  -vudfs /dev/usbms0 /USBDRIVE

    Next, you can cd to that mount point and generate a long listing of the files in that directory, which would look similar to the following:

    -r--r--r--    1 root     system         5565 Sep 04 17:27 bosinst.data
    -r--r--r--    1 root     system        11280 Sep 04 17:30 image.data
    dr-xr-xr-x    1 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 lost+found
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 installp
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 udi
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 RPMS
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 ismp
    dr-xr-xr-x    3 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 root
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 sbin
    -r--r--r--    1 root     system           28 Sep 04 17:54 OSLEVEL
    dr-xr-xr-x    8 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:54 usr
    -r--r--r--    1 root     system           60 Sep 04 17:54 mkcd.data
    -r--r--r--    1 root     system           30 Sep 04 17:54 .Version
    -r--r--r--    1 root     system          217 Sep 04 17:55 README.vios
    dr-xr-xr-x    3 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:55 nimol
    dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     system         2048 Sep 04 17:56 ppc


    Note:  If you don't see multiple directories similar to the preceding list, and only see a .iso file, the iso image was not written to the drive, it was copied to the drive.

[{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SWG10","label":"AIX"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF002","label":"AIX"}],"Version":"All Versions","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB08","label":"Cognitive Systems"}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
12 November 2019

UID

ibm10794715