I recently needed to create a USB key running BackTrack (if you don’t already know that live CD, you should 🙂 Version 3 was released a couple of months ago with a lot of good features but this is not the point of this post.

So grab a USB key (beware, dodgy ones might not boot right). Create a partition of 1G of type FAT16 (6) then format it with the following command: mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdc1 (on my system, my USB key is seen as /dev/sdc, YMMV). You then need to download the USB Version and mount it locally like this : mount -o loop bt3final_usb.iso /media/disk. Then mount your local key as follows: mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usbdisk and copy the stuff over: cp -rp /media/disk/* /media/usbdisk.

After that, cd into /media/usbdisk and execute the installation script: ./boot/bootinst.sh. If all goes well, you should get:

Flushing filesystem buffers, this may take a while…
Setting up MBR on /dev/sdc…
The Master Boot Record of /dev/sdc has been updated.
Activating partition /dev/sdc1…
pt[1] -> 80
The partition table has been updated.
Updating MBR on /dev/sdc…
Setting up boot record for /dev/sdc1…
Disk /dev/sdc1 should be bootable now. Installation finished.

Success, you are now ready to crack the world (well, start with your network first…)