I use MacOS 11 and I wanted to flash Kali Linux on USB, using version 1.5.09 of Etcher but whenever I try to flash it I always have an error that my image can be corrupted. Even though, I installed it from the official site. I tried using another ISO file, I tried using different USB sticks. I tried starting the program up using sudo. I also tried to give the program whole access to files, but nothing works.
Hope for your help, let me know if you need any additional information.
I managed to flash it, but now I get an error that it’s unreadable and apparently I won’t be able to boot up from it. Did I do something wrong? Could it an issue with the flashing? Or the ISO file itself?
Hi there, and welcome! First and foremost, if the file has actually flashed to the USB drive, I suppose it is worth trying to actually boot it up and see what happens. But, based on the behavior you have described, it mostly sounds like the USB drive has some failing blocks that are unwritable. Have a look at this blog post to get a better understanding of what might be going on: https://www.balena.io/blog/did-etcher-break-my-usb-sd-card/
You might try another USB stick, and see if that works better. Thanks!
Thanks @dtischler . Will try doing it now. Because as I said, it didn’t work even with my other usb stick, I was having the same error. I will let you know how I went when I’m done.
So I tried formatting it again, did the flash process and got the same mistake again that disk isn’t readable. Not sure what I should do here, because I already tried a lot of ways and yes, I also tried with a different USB stick, it still doesn’t work. Also, I can boot up from it, because my computer doesn’t recognise when I go to the “Startup Disk”, I also tried booting up from Windows laptop, but it also doesn’t recognise USB. To be honest, I was expecting it, because I had formatted the USB stick couple of times before.
Anyway is there anything else you can suggest me to do?
Thanks in Advance!
Note: that I tried already 3 different ISO files of Kali Linux, so most likely it’s not an ISO issue or anything.
Note 2: I tried to do it using Terminal and following steps outlined here https://kali.org/docs/usb/kali-linux-live-usb-install-macos/ . But I get the same mistake that disk isn’t readable, if I do it through Terminal. I’m really confused, because I tried so many things but nothing works.
Note 3: If it helps somehow, I installed ISO file from here https://www.kali.org/downloads/ and the file name I installed is kali-linux-2020.3-installer-amd64.iso .
Note 4: I also had noticed that the name of my USB drive resets to default, how it was when I bought it. Therefore my name which I put in wasn’t saved, not sure if it relates to my problem but just letting you know.
Note 5: I tried to do the flashing process using my windows pc with the same ISO and I got exactly the same mistake, it asks me to format it because it’s not readable.
Note 6: I found out that every time I press flash I get an error something went wrong, then when I try again it works properly, not sure if it helps, but letting you know
Note 7: I tried to boot up from EFI file which I got on windows and I got an error which says that “Selected boot device failed”. But I can’t do it on Mac due to the fact that it doesn’t recognise it at all.
Hi, did you try to follow this guide https://www.kali.org/docs/installation/kali-linux-dual-boot-kali-on-mac-hardware/ in case that’s what you’re trying to achieve?
If not, what are you trying to achieve? If you want a bootable media, the image has to be bootable by itself.
As my colleague mentioned, if the flash completes the only thing I can suggest is checking the kali-linux installation guides for what suits your needs the most, as Etcher flashes byte-to-byte the content of the image which means extra-steps have to be taken before/after flashing in case the image requires them, and it’s something beyond our control for now.
Thanks for your help. I found the issue. I didn’t have enough space on USB, I had less than it was required. Anyway, big thanks for your help!
Glad you figured it out. 