Recently I bought a brand new laptop with no optical drive onboard. The obvious way to install Fedora 11 was throught a Fedora 11 Live USB Stick which i had to create. Althought I wanted a fully customized clean install and the only way to do that is thgough a Fedora 11 Installation DVD. So, I had to create a Fedora 11 Installation USB Stick.
After a google search I came up with the following link of “how to install Fedora 11 DVD from a 4GB USB stick”. I am pasting the steps with some small corrections.
What you will need: a USB stick with 4GB minimum capacity, a Fedora 11 DVD image file and livecd-tools.
# yum install -y livecd-tools
# mkdir /media/iso
# livecd-iso-to-disk –reset-mbr <path to>/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1
# mkdir /media/<usb disk>/images
# mount -o loop <path to>/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /media/iso
# cp /media/iso/images/install.img /media/<usb disk>/images/
# cp <path to>/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /media/<usb disk>/
*where sdb1 is your usb stick device
Now, when you boot your usb stick you have to choose that the installation image is on a hard drive and after that select your usb stick. Probably is under the name /dev/sdb1 or the last in the list of the devices. Now you are ready for a clean and customized Fedora 11 installation like you are booting from a Fedora 11 Installation DVD.
Enjoy 🙂
Christos Bacharakis 
The easiest tool for the job I’ve come across is unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
I had some troubles with unetbootin and Fedora but it was long time ago. I hope it’s all ok now. I’ll re-try it.
Your Fedora 11 image is labeled Fedora 10? 😉
Yes, you are right.. I missed it. Thanks
small mistake:
“–reset-mbr” should be “–reset-mbr”
double dash!
It is a double dash! 🙂
I used LiveUSB-Creator, on Windows, and works like a charm. I had to copy the CD image to USB stick though and I don’t understand why. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your reply! If you want to create just a Fedora Live USB Stick, then just run LiveUSB-Creator.
IF you want to install Fedora 11 to your system through a USB stick, follow the above instructions. The difference is that when you install fedora through a Live USB Stick you just copy the extract image from the stick to your hard drive. Following the above instructions you install Fedora 11 by selecting what packages you want to install. Just like the Fedora installation DVD.
You run Live USB Creator, you created a Fedora live USB stick successfully but you had to copy on your own the Fedora 11 Live CD image to work?
it worked for me, why not also add –format if you have added new mbr. thanks 🙂
hi christos. great instructions. thx. i was not able to get it running on a brand new hard disk which has no OS installed onto it.
so here’s what i have
hdd – new HDD.. no OS installed
usb stick – made as per instructions you mentioned above.
when i boot the machine i get into the grub prompt. any idea how to get going in this case ?
thx.
yashesh
now christos
is live usb creator and i think is easiest way 😀
Update for Fedora 13.
You can achieve this all with one line:
livecd-iso-to-disk –format –reset-mbr /Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1
The format switch prepares the USB stick and copies the required boot images, then the ISO file.
Alright! Thank you very much for the update!
Maybe I will post an updated version!
Thanks 🙂
In reply to the post saying that after the install it gave a grub prompt on boot – the answer is that during the install by default grub is written to the mbr of the usbkey, and not to the HD so it won’t boot from the HD afterwards. It is possible to fix this by booting to a rescue cd but the easiest way is to watch for the boot section during the install, and switch the default drive from /dev/sdb (usually, which is the stick) to /dev/sda which is the internal HD before continuing with the install. Then the installer will write grub to the MBR of the internal drive, and once the install is complete then boot will run fine from the new install on the HD. Hope this helps.
Installing Additional Programs to a USB Fedora Install http://www.linuxine.com/story/installing-additional-programs-usb-fedora-install this tutoiral gives more information on installing Fedora to USB stick
Thanks for that Edward. That along with this guide is really useful as I had come unstuck a couple of times with this guide.
How’s things, I just seen that sometimes this webpage shows a 500 error. I thought you would be keen to know. All the best