Installation Media - Mageia wiki
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Synopsis:
This page describes the various available installation and Live ISO files for the Mageia distribution, and how to download and put them on media for use.
We also describe checking and repairing the download, how to restore the USB stick, and short about the usage and possibilities of the different ISO.
Contents
Choices
2.1
Checking the Downloaded Image File Integrity
2.1.1
Principle
2.1.2
Practical
2.2
How to fix a Broken ISO Download
Put the ISO on a media of your choice
3.1
Burn an ISO to optical media
3.2
Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive
3.2.1
Example: Using the
dd
command to install live ISO files to a USB flash drive
Installation-only media
4.1
Classic installer ISO
4.2
Network Installer ISO
Live ISO
5.1
Live mode
5.1.1
Installing a running Live to disk
5.2
Persistence with memory devices
5.2.1
Advantages of persistence
5.2.2
About speed
5.2.3
Realisation
5.3
LiveUSB MultiBoot Methods (verified)
5.4
Other LiveUSB Methods (not yet verified)
5.5
Other LiveUSB Methods (currently not working)
Removing the ISO files from USB Media
6.1
Using Mageia
6.2
Using command line
6.3
Using Microsoft Windows
Choices
The various Mageia ISO files.
Live:
You can run them directly
from DVD or USB stick without installing. Can install itself to disk but not upgrade earlier Mageia release. Use them to check out Mageia and machine compatibility - or use as a portable system. They contain the most popular applications, and comes in four variants with different desktop environments to try: three
64-bit
systems with
Plasma, GNOME
and
Xfce
respectively, plus a
32-bit Xfce
. On USB
you can enable persistent storage
which will be automatically used for settings, user files, updates, and added applications.
Classic installer:
Can be used offline to install or upgrade Mageia
, optionally with internet connection for updates (recommended during upgrade) and to retrieve more packages. Comes in two variants:
32- and 64-bit
. It contain a lot of applications and desktops to choose from, and still much more are available online.
Netinstall:
Minimal installer boot disk
, must be connected to network and download what it install. Four variants:
32- or 64-bit, with proprietary drivers or not.
For further detail see below under
Classic installer ISO
Network Installer ISO
Live ISO
Also see our documentation:
Select and use ISOs
SIZES:
All the ISOs fit easily on an 8GB
USB stick
For
DVD
, since Mageia 10, most ISOs have outgrown standard DVDs: the
Classic
Plasma Live
Gnome Live
. If you want to install these from DVD, you will need to use
dual-layer
media.
However, both
Xfce Live
ISOs (32 and 64 bit) still fit onto a standard single-layer DVD. If this is your only option, install this ISO and later add to the installed system what else you want, like a different desktop.
All Mageia ISO images are hybrid, which means you can burn them to a DVD (CD works for netinstall) as well as USB stick and and they can boot.
Use our
download page
or find the Classic and Live ISOs on your
favourite
mirror under
).
Netinstaller can be found at
).
For all except Netinstaller you can choose Bittorent if you like.
Checking the Downloaded Image File Integrity
Principle
Did you notice in the Download Mageia page, the hexadecimal number called
md5sum
sha512sum
or
sha3-512sum
(In the mirror folders they are available as files.)
They have been calculated by an algorithm from the ISO file. If you ask this algorithm to calculate again this number from your downloaded file, either you have the same number and your downloaded file is correct, or the number is different and your ISO is broken, probably an incomplete download. Do not try to use the broken ISO. Either download it again or use the
BitTorrent (How to fix a Broken ISO Download)
method below.
Furthermore, our checksum files are signed to avoid that images and checksums are usurped.
Practical
Open a terminal, as a standard user, and type the command
sha512sum /path/to/image/file.iso
For this example we use the Mageia 7.1 iso image, the folder is
/Mageia-7.1-x86_64
the ISO file is
Mageia-7.1-x86_64.iso
. You need both the ISO and the checksum file in the same folder.
sha512sum -c Mageia-7.1-x86_64.iso.sha512
Mageia-7.1-x86_64.iso: OK
You can do the same with
sha3-512sum
sha3-512sum -c Mageia-7.1-x86_64.iso.sha3
Mageia-7.1-x86_64.iso: OK
How to fix a Broken ISO Download
If you have spent a long time downloading an ISO only to find that it fails the checksum test, do not panic. You may not need to download the ISO again. It is possible to use
BitTorrent
or
wget
to rebuild the ISO and download or fix the missing parts. See
this article
from the Damn Small Linux wiki for a very useful primer on the subject.
Put the ISO on a media of your choice
It is also possible
Installing Mageia from ISO on disk
Warning!
Starting with Mageia 10,
Classic Installer
and the
Plasma
and
Gnome Live ISOs
no longer fit in single layer DVD, you should use Dual Layer DVD or USB devices with 8 Gb or more space.
Both 32 & 64 bit
Xfce Live
ISOs still fit on a standard single-layer DVD.
Burn an ISO to optical media
The netinstaller ISOs fits easily on a CD. All other need a DVD.
See
Writing CD and DVD images
Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive
All Mageia ISOs are hybrid, which means you can 'dump' them on a USB stick and use it to boot, test, and (optionally) install the system. But please note the size limitation as for example a 4 GB ISO image can be too big for some 4 GB USB drives due to rounding the size to GB.
Note you can not copy the file using a file manager, you need a tool to write the file content directly to the root of the device (and not a partition).
Warning!
"Dumping" an image onto a device
destroys
access to any previous files!
Note:
To later restore the flash drive to full empty capacity, many popular tools fails - but good methods exist, see
Removing the ISO files from USB Media
below.
Warning!
Unetbootin should not be used
to copy the ISO image to a USB drive (see below).
To dump a Mageia installation or Live ISO on a USB stick, you can choose one of several tools:
From a
Mageia
system use
IsoDumper
. It also supports creating
persistence
- so the stick remembers your work, settings, system updates, added applications...
From
Ubuntu
use the application
Disks
with the action "Restore an image" and select the .iso file.
From
Mint
use
Minstick
, which is similar to IsoDumper.
From
any Linux
system simply copy the ISO to the USB stick with
dd
(see example below).
Use
Ventoy
to have one or several ISO on one device, with menu to choose.
Ventoy can be installed on the memory device using Linux, MS Windows, or any system that can write
its ISO file
to the device.
Note:
when running any Mageia installer from Ventoy, you must choose custom partitioning and manually select the correct target drive for partitions, and at the end select the correct location for the boot loader.
From
Microsoft Windows
, see
Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive - Alternative tools
Example: Using the
dd
command to install live ISO files to a USB flash drive
Open a console and go to the directory, where the
name_of_the_mageia.iso
is stored (in this example the file
Mageia-7-Live-Plasma-x86_64.iso
is stored in the directory
Downloads
cd Downloads
Warning!
BE VERY CAREFUL TO USE THE CORRECT DEVICE NAME AS YOU CAN OVERWRITE YOUR HARD DISK WITHOUT ANY WARNING
HINT
: type
lsblk
or
mount
in a terminal window to see the USB device name.
NEVER USE /dev/sda
(that's usually your main system drive).
Since this method uses the whole USB stick you have to specify the node of the device and not of a partition on the device
(e.g. use /dev/sde not /dev/sde1)
; you should be very careful when using this method because writing the image to a SCSI or SATA hard disk will render it unbootable and destroy some data on it.
Become after that a root with the command
su -p
and enter the root password. After that you can dump the ISO to an USB device via the following command
dd if=Mageia-7-Live-Plasma-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sd(x) bs=1M status=progress && sync
where
(x)=your device name eg: /dev/sdb;/dev/sdc....etc
2887+1 records in
2887+1 records out
3027845120 bytes (3,0 GB, 2,8 GiB) copied, 145,719 s, 20,8 MB/s
Then safely remove the USB (it should be mounted)
Type
mount
again and see which device is missing
Installation-only media
Mageia's Classic and Netinstall ISO both use the traditional drakx installer. These are
not
Live DVD/CDs, i.e. they cannot be used to preview or test run the distro, they can only be used to install Mageia on an HDD (or USB HDD). Below is a detailed explanation of the features that each of these media provides.
Classic installer ISO
The Classic installation ISO image can be used without internet connection, and includes lots of software including the most prominent desktops to choose from: Plasma5, GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE, Xfce.
Optionally you may add the online Mageia repositories during the installation, which means you can install updates while installing, and more packages than those available on the disc.
You'll be given the choice to add nonfree software (you don't pay for it: the
non-free
means it's not covered by the
Free Software Foundation
licensing) during install, for finding nonfree software on it (e.g. the NVIDIA or AMD/ATI proprietary graphics cards drivers or firmware for wifi cards... etc). You can also add the online repositories during the installation and you can reconfigure your hardware at the Summary stage (towards the end of the installation) to install the nonfree software needed for your hardware.
The Classic Installer ISO comes in two editions:
i586 (32-bit)
x86_64 (64-bit)
Note:
the 64-bit version will not work on 32-bit hardware.
UEFI is supported by both the 32-bit and the 64-bit ISOs
Network Installer ISO
You can perform installs by downloading over network by booting on either
netinstall.iso
or
netinstall-nonfree.iso
Both
netinstall.iso
and
netinstall-nonfree.iso
are very minimalistic images, which boot stage 1 of the drakx installer to set up the sources to download stage 2 and packages from.
The
-nonfree
version contain non free drivers needed for some hardware. Both comes in both 32- and 64-bit versions. For more information see
Mageia_Netinstall_Iso_(Boot.iso)
Note:
only nonfree works with wifi.
Live ISO
Live mode
A Live ISO can be used to preview Mageia without first installing it on your computer. Simply download the ISO, burn it on a disk using your favourite ISO burner (or dump it on a USB key using
dd or IsoDumper
, see
Dump Mageia ISO on a USB flash drive
), boot the system to see how well Mageia works on your computer.
To limit the size of ISOs, each Mageia Live ISO contains only one desktop environment (Plasma5, GNOME or Xfce). CDs size ISOs are no more available since Mageia 5.
Starting from Mageia 7, booting on a UEFI system is supported by both the 32-bit and 64-bit media (previous releases supported UEFI only for 64-bit media)
Installing a running Live to disk
When you find Mageia Live runs fine you may install it as it is to your HDD; there's an icon on the desktop to start the
draklive
installer. The install will be with all settings and updates the Live currently use included.
Note:
Installing a Live ISO to your computer simply copies the virtual file system of the Live ISO to your drive, along with some machine-specific configuration. For this reason, Live ISOs can only be used to create completely fresh installations,
they cannot be used to upgrade from previous releases
Warning!
Create a user with a new login if you don't format a /home partition. User's configuration is written in user's space, which can overwrite some personal data. This can be the case for Firefox, Thunderbird, Kmail data...
Persistence with memory devices
If you use a memory device like USB stick, Live Mageia 7 and later can be run from it in persistent mode.
Also see
Persistent Live systems
Advantages of persistence
Store your work, logins, settings - from Mageia 8 and later
encrypted
if you like, see below
As it no longer uses the RAM file system, it stands more chance of working on machines with low amounts of RAM. (Like an internal disk installed system.)
If you really need to use one of the proprietary drivers, it doesn't have to be rebuilt each time you reboot. This is particularly important if you need the Broadcom wl driver, because that often only works after a reboot.
Faster easier boot - no questions of locale, time...
Network etc configured, you can surf the net, reach your cloud... quickly
Have your printer and other devices installed
Add additional program of choice
Functionality updates to programs
Security updates i.e to your web browser
About speed
The disadvantage is that writing to a filesystem on the USB stick can be slow. It's worth investing in a high-speed USB stick if you want to use persistence, and using USB 3.0 if you can, and check the write speed specification when buying USB stick. Here is about
Testing storage speed
. And naturally, the lightweight Xfce desktop will be more agile than Gnome or Plasma.
To minimise the number of packages downloaded and stored in the persistent partition: uninstall packages you do not need - good to do before the first update. See
Removing packages#Persistent Live USB
and more on that wiki page.
Realisation
Use our graphical tool
isodumper
when burning the stick. You can select persistence and encryption, see
IsoDumper Writing ISO images on USB sticks
Later boot on it, answer the first time questions of language etc, configure network, remove packages per above, update the system.
(Technical details follow)
A partition in ext4 format has to be added in the remaining space alongside the system partition and be named "mgalive-persist".
Note:
Mageia 7
diskdrake
and
gparted
do not show nor handle partitions on Live ISOs. Mageia 8
diskdrake
have been improved and tested successfully for this task.
The partition may be encrypted - you enter a key at boot time - securing sensitive data like logins and your files.
The partition is searched on the same base device as the ISO image, and if found, used for the writeable layer of the live filesystem instead of creating a temporary RAM disk for the purpose. Thus stored information will be recovered at the next boot. This includes your choice of language, network settings, all your files, and any system update and alteration.
LiveUSB MultiBoot Methods (verified)
Note:
Easy2boot
works only with Windows.
Make an Easy2Boot USB Flash/Hard drive
Easy2Boot
- copy the
ISO file (and any others)
to the
\_ISO\LINUX
or
\_ISO\MAINMENU
folder.
The Linux tool
MultiSystem
is supported in French and English.
Other LiveUSB Methods (not yet verified)
The free Windows tool
LiLi
supports many distros.
Easy2Boot project
RMPrepUSB
is a grub4dos multiboot USB drive solution. It boots 99% of all linux distros (it uses a generic method). All you need to do is copy the ISO file to the grub4dos USB drive's \_ISO\MAINMENU folder (no utility needed) and then run some defrag utility to ensure the ISO file is contiguous. (
author's post in the forum
Other LiveUSB Methods (currently not working)
A sourceforge project
multibootusb
, a tool for several Linux distros or Windows versions, uses the Grub4dOS bootloader (and Gambas3).
The Windows tools YUMI and UUI at
PenDriveLinux
(for single-boot and multi-boot) may work someday, likely with boot parameters specifying the location for distro files; both unpack an ISO to flash and use syslinux to make it bootable.
Removing the ISO files from USB Media
Removing the files from a USB stick once you've installed Mageia, so they can be used for other purposes again.
Most graphical formatting tools have problems with media where an ISO file has been put. But in Mageia we have tools that work great for that. Here we also give example for *nix command line and another OS.
If you just want to put another ISO on the stick, there is no need for this procedure.
Using Mageia
IsoDumper
- Most safe!
This is the safest option as it tries hard to make you unable to select system drives.
Apart from dumping ISO files to the device, it can also take a backup image, and in this case, you select to format it to one of a few common filesystem types, and label (name) it.
Diskdrake
(From Mageia 8 onwards)
Select the device - Make very sure it is the right one - all data on it WILL be lost!
Then press the
Clear
button down left, then partition the device.
Installer
(From Mageia 8 onwards)
(Yes you can perform a conventional install to a removable device.)
Classic and Live installers from Mageia 8 onwards take care of it when you select use the whole disk, or when you press
Clear
in custom partitioning.
Using command line
... in Mageia or similar *nix system.
1) Open a Terminal and type:
su -
to switch to root. You will be prompted for the root password
2) Confirm the device by typing (or copying & pasting) this command.
fdisk -l
This list all drives and some info on them. The entry for a 4GB flash drive may start like:
Disk /dev/sdb: 3980 MB, 3980394496 bytes
...and some info on that drive. Note the /dev/sd
Warning!
Make sure you are reformatting the correct drive, there is no going back - all data on that drive *WILL* be lost!
Your device could have a different designation than
/dev/sdb
, but we will stick with this designation in the following procedure.
The size of the drive is a good way to confirm which drive you are going to reformat. Also it usually is the last one fdisk lists.
3) Unmount the device by typing (or copying & pasting):
umount /dev/sdb
4) Reformat the USB device to fat32, by typing (or copying & pasting):
mkdosfs -F 32 -I /dev/sdb
Now you can remove it.
Using Microsoft Windows
A normal format will not restore access to full storage capacity although if you use the Disk Management tool (right-click on the Windows Logo > Disk Management, or type "Disk Management" into the search box either at the Start Button or in Control Panel), you should be able to restore full storage access. You will need to delete the partition on the Flash Drive and then create a new one and format it. If that's just a little bit daunting, then
rufus
or HPformatUSB can restore partitioning (this section to be completed).
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This page was last edited on 27 January 2026, at 17:20.
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