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Jovin Miranda
Asked: 2020-01-26 19:07:45 +0800 CST

How to convert an iso file to img format in linux?

  • 772

I had downloaded a ".iso" image of the ubuntu website and for some official work i need to convert this to ".img" format. i see a lot of windows software's available but how do i do this conversion in linux?

conversion iso

4 Answers

  1. Actually there isn't any difference between iso's and img's apart the extension. Look at this link.

    So you have to just change the extension.

    • 9

  2. To me an iso file is an image (img) file with the iso9660 file system. In other words, iso files are a subset of image files. As a matter of fact, most iso files are synthetic images, not created by making images of drives, but typically made in order to create boot drives in DVD disks, USB pendrives or memory cards.

    • So I agree with the answers, that you can replace the extension iso with img.

      mv file.iso file.img

    • In order to make an img file accepted by some cloning tool that wants iso files, you could do it the other way too. But in principle that may not be quite correct, because an img file might be an image of a drive or partition, that does not contain an iso 9660 file system (and it might not be an image of a bootable drive). So it could make people confused.

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  3. geteltorito f1.iso > f1.img

    TL;DR

    I've found an advice to convert iso to img to boot from USB. I was not able to boot from USB with written downloaded ISO. Some time later I found an advice to convert to img via:

    geteltorito f1.iso > f1.img

    And indeed I was able to boot from USB where I've written img file. The files were different:

    $ file 6muj31uc.iso
6muj31uc.iso: ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data '6muj31us' (bootable)
$ file 6muj31uc.img  
6muj31uc.img: DOS/MBR boot sector; partition 1 : ID=0x4, active, start-CHS (0x0,1,1), end-CHS (0xe,63,32), startsector 32, 30688 sectors

    Boot image sounds like img file:

    man geteltorito

    geteltorito is a Perl script which extracts the initial/default El Torito boot image from a CD if one exists.

    • 0

  4. actually one of the users had posted the answer but deleted it, the foll. had worked for me:

    dd if=/home/asic/ubuntu.iso of=/home/asic/ubuntu.img
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