Boot VM from USB

Introduction⚑

I needed to repartition a disk on a Linux VM and obviously the only way to do that is if the filesystem is read-only. This means booting off a USB drive. But how does the VM know to boot off the USB of the host? This is how:

Create the USB drive:⚑

I created a USB boot disk for GParted Live:

1. Get GParted Live iso
2. Create the image:

   ╰─$ sudo dd if=./gparted-live-1.4.0-5-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4M; sync

Get the VM to boot off the USB drive⚑

Boot VMware VM startup (gparted.live):

1. Power down VM
2. Virtual Machine -> Advanced
3. Change Firmware type to UEFI
4. Enable UEFI Secure Boot
5. Virtual Machine -> "Power on to Firmware"
6. Select USB device