Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Create a bootable USB flash disk on MacOs

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
    5 Posts 5 Posters 9.3k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • M
      mricecool
      last edited by

      Couldn't find a good how-to make a bootable usb disk on macOS, so I made this for anyone else looking.

      1. Download the memstick version
      2. run "$ diskutil list"
      3. insert your flash media
      4. run "$ diskutil list" again, notice the new device that has appered
      5. run "$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN", were "N" is the device number
      7. extract your downloeded copy, so that you get the ".img" file
      8. convert your downloaded copy of pfSense to iso "$ hdiutil convert pfSense-CE-memstick-2.4.2-RELEASE-amd64.img -format UDRW -o pfSense-CE-memstick-2.4.2-RELEASE-amd64.iso"
      9. Remove the ".dmg" file extension of the outputtet file.
      10. write the "iso" file to flash drive "$ sudo dd if=pfSense-CE-memstick-2.4.2-RELEASE-amd64.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m". Notice the "r" in "rdisk". This will speed things up.
      11. eject the flash drive, "$ diskutil eject /dev/disk2"
      12. Done!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • L
        lemonkey
        last edited by

        Thank you for this. The official FAQ instructions didn't work for me. The resulting USB stick wasn't able to be booted from.

        https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Writing_Disk_Images

        Basically, they just recommend doing the following if on a mac:

        gzcat pfSense-CE-memstick-2.4.3-RELEASE-amd64.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/disk2s1 bs=1m

        Your steps did end up working, so thanks again!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • jahonixJ
          jahonix
          last edited by

          I was told quite some folks here now use Etcher, which is available for Win and maxOS, to write images to sticks.

          As I am lazy I use applePi-Baker which has a nice GUI and is derived from the RaspberryPi universe.
          As easy as point-n-shoot.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • F
            fergalb
            last edited by

            This worked for me. Many Thanks!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • X
              Xappery
              last edited by Xappery

              It seems that everyone's methods are different.
              Has no one ever done that ? https://www.iseepassword.com/create-bootable-usb-dvd-on-mac.html

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • First post
                Last post
              Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.