Create a bootable USB flash disk on MacOs

[mricecool]

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!

[lemonkey]

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!

[jahonix]

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.

[fergalb]

This worked for me. Many Thanks!

[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