Creating a Bootable FreeNAS USB Stick on a Mac
Obtain the FreeNAS image. For this example I am using FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img. Have a USB stick on hand that hopefully supports booting.
Insert the USB stick into the MAC USB port. Open a terminal to find out which device the USB stick is.
diskutil list
The output should be something like:
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 280.1 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS Data 219.5 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *4.0 GB disk2
1: Windows_FAT_32 KINGSTON 4.0 GB disk2s1
Since I am using a Kingston USB sick “disk2” is the device. This translates to “/dev/disk2”. Next unmount the disk:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Then write the FreeNAS image to the USB stick:
gunzip -c FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img | dd of=/dev/disk2
This should result in output like this:
147168+0 records in
147168+0 records out
75350016 bytes transferred in 108.529822 secs (694279 bytes/sec)
Next eject the disk. This should ensure all data is written to the USB stick before we remove it.
diskutil eject /dev/disk2
Finally, remove the USB stick from the USB port.