To prepare the USB stick, you will need a system where GNU/Linux is already running and where USB is supported. You should ensure that the usb-storage kernel module is loaded (modprobe usb-storage) and try to find out which SCSI device the USB stick has been mapped to (in this example /dev/sda is used). To write to your stick, you may have to turn off its write protection switch. Note that the USB stick should be at least 128 MB in size (smaller setups are possible if you follow ). There is an all-in-one file hd-media/boot.img.gz which contains all the installer files (including the kernel) as well as SYSLINUX and its configuration file. You only have to extract it directly to your USB stick: # zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sda There is an all-in-one file hd-media/boot.img.gz which contains all the installer files (including the kernel) as well as yaboot and its configuration file. Create a partition of type "Apple_Bootstrap" on your USB stick using mac-fdisk's C command and extract the image directly to that: # zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sda2 Using this method will destroy anything already on the device. Make sure that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. After that, mount the USB memory stick (mount /dev/sda /dev/sda2 /mnt), which will now have a FAT filesystem an HFS filesystem on it, and copy a Debian netinst or businesscard ISO image to it. Please note that the file name must end in .iso. Unmount the stick (umount /mnt) and you are done. If you like more flexibility or just want to know what's going on, you should use the following method to put the files on your stick. &usb-setup-i386.xml; &usb-setup-powerpc.xml; The installer will look for a Debian ISO image on the stick as its source for additional data needed for the installation. So your next step is to copy a Debian ISO image (businesscard, netinst or even a full CD image) onto your stick (be sure to select one that fits). The file name of the image must end in .iso. If you want to install over the network, without using an ISO image, you will of course skip the previous step. Moreover you will have to use the initial ramdisk from the netboot directory instead of the one from hd-media, because hd-media/initrd.gz does not have network support. When you are done, unmount the USB memory stick (umount /mnt) and activate its write protection switch. If your system refuses to boot from the memory stick, the stick may contain an invalid master boot record (MBR). To fix this, use the install-mbr command from the package mbr: # install-mbr /dev/sda