[CentOS] Creating a USB bootable modified netinstall ISO image

Wed Dec 3 16:51:57 UTC 2014
Alfred von Campe <alfred at von-campe.com>

I’ve been creating slightly modified CentOS netinstall ISO images using the following steps:

Copy contents of CentOS netinstall ISO image to a temporary directory
Edit isolunux/isolinux.cfg file
Create new ISO image using the following command: mkisofs -o new.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -R -J -v -T /tmp/iso

I’ve been using that command for many years and found it in the RHEL 5 documentation I believe.  Anyway, so far, so good.  If I burn a CD from this new ISO image I can boot from it and get the modified menu as expected.  However, if I use dd to copy this ISO image to a USB stick, It’s not bootable.  Using the exact same dd command with the original CentOS ISO image produces a bootable USB stick.  Any idea why my modified ISO image is not bootable when copied to a USB stick?

Alfred