For me a network boot server is a core infrastructure tool on my home network allowing me to:

Directs clients without an iPXE implementation to the TFTP server to acquire architecture-specific iPXE firmware images that allow them to perform an iPXE boot. Activates only on the network adapter that has an IP address on the defined subnet. Directs clients to the DNS server. Directs clients to the iPXE server for routing via NAT. It is possible to configure the Bare Metal service in such a way that nodes will boot into the deploy image directly from Object Storage. Doing this avoids having to cache the images on the ironic-conductor host and serving them via the ironic-conductor’s HTTP server. This can be done if: the Image Service is used for image storage. Tftp localhost tftp get ipxe.8da38b4a9310.pxe Received 343580 bytes in 0.1 seconds tftp quit Now boot your client system with PXE enabled and it should find your macOS DHCP server (through bootpd), assign an IP address, find the TFTP server, transfer and run the netboot image!

• Boot computers into recovery environments when something goes wrong
• Boot current Linux installers/Live CDs for wipes and fresh installs
• Run diskless nodes that perform specific worker functions

Until recently I had always manually maintained a custom set of boot files on a small TFTP server and kept them up to date with the boot options I found useful.

When I discovered the netboot.xyz project I immediately saw the value in centrally maintaining a current rolling list of internet enabled boot options. We have been working for months to bring you an LSIO image that allows full self hosting of these boot options.

Do you want to stop downloading and loading current Linux Distros to USB sticks and CDs ? This image might just be exactly what you are looking for and it will always have the latest options available with a constantly growing list:

Goodbye text console installers and hello modern Linux Desktop Environments.

This image is unique in our collection, as to be fully functional you need to have a network device capable of setting PXE boot next-server options. We keep maintained documentation on setting those boot options here. (if you still want to try netboot.xyz without a local server they have all kinds of boot options available here including CD/USB)

Essentially what happens here is:

1. Your computer boots off it's network device (set in bios or selected as an option from boot menu F10 or F12 conventionally)
2. The computer asks your local DHCP server for an IP and what it should boot off of
3. Once networking is configured your Computer looks for the file specified in the previous request which is hosted on a TFTP server in this container
4. Your computer boots the IPXE boot file as a kernel and it now presents the full netboot.xyz menu hosted off the same TFTP server in the form of IPXE files

The image itself is run like any other images we host out of Dockerhub: (there is also a template for Unraid users in our repository)

This image hosts 3 core services:

• TFTP server for serving IPXE boot files and menus (port 69 udp)
• NGINX server for hosting custom netboot.xyz assets locally (port 8080)
• netboot.xyz web application for customizing local menus and pulling in remote assets (port 3000)

Just like the vast majority of our Library this image is compatible with all major Arm platforms out there with arm32v7 and arm64v8 images available.

Customizing Boot Menus

One of the core functions of the Web interface is to allow you to edit the IPXE files, under the Menus tab in the application you can create new IPXE files or choose one to edit:

It is important to note when you save a file here or create a new one you will always be able to revert to the stock IPXE file so do not be afraid to experiment.

For information on creating/editing IPXE files and the basic layout see the Boot Menu Basics section below.

Hosting netboot.xyz Assets Locally

Hosting the assets from NGINX is optional , but most Live CDs are multiple Gigabytes and if you don't want to download them from the internet every time you boot them you might want to hop in and download the ones you need along with pointing the menus to your local server.

Under the Local Assets tab you can pull in assets from the current release of the netboot.xyz menus and boot files.

This downloads files to your NGINX endpoint (by default running on port 8080) with an identical directory structure to the netboot.xyz github assets. This allows you to swap out a live_endpoint setting either universally in the boot.cfg or per file where needed by adding the stanza: (swap with the IP of your server)

This live_endpoint setting is crucial if you want to have computers on your network ingest assets from your local webserver instead of Github, for example a stock boot option for Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 to see where this setting is used:

If you plan on hosting all of the assets locally simply change the setting in the boot.cfg file but for example you only want to download the Ubuntu assets place that line at the top of the file live-ubuntu.ipxe under the #!ipxe header line.

In the next section we will be going over the basics of writing IPXE scripts and customizing the boot menu.

Hello world!

IPXE might be scripting language but at it's core it writes just like all other boot configs from Grub to Syslinux. The most basic Linux boot file would boot a Kernel and initramfs conventionally containing a pre-boot environment but in our example below it is the whole install system:

This boot snippet will load the Network installer for Ubuntu 18.04. You will notice a few things about this, the first is we have the ability to set variables using set and the next being we are using a remote webserver to ingest these files. This is what gives the IPXE bootloader the ability to consume all of this stuff from the internet vs being locally hosted on a tftp server. It also includes a ca certificate chain so it can pull from modern https endpoints like Github.

On top of this basic example you can use logic operators like iseq (is equal) or isset (is set) to control the flow of the menus on top of the users options being captured with choose menus. There are great resources and documentation on the IPXE website for this language:

Though you will likely find the best examples in you locally hosted netboot.xyz boot menu files. To find out what you would do with a simple boot snippet file like this skip down to the Custom booting specific machines below.

boot.cfg your go to file

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The netboot.xyz project as a whole has made every effort to make all the settings a normal user self hosting would need to modify be loaded from the boot.cfg file. This file has 3 sections a normal user would modify:

1. Core Global Vars- This includes the important live_endpoint for self hosted assets along with common settings to name your site etc.
2. Mirrors- If you host local Linux mirrors in your environment you will want to swap them out in this section to speed up Linux Network installs.
3. Enable Menu Options- If you do not want to maintain customized IPXE files

Custom booting specific machines

If you have a specific machine on your network (diskless or not) that you want to persistently boot a specific boot file you can achieve this by adding an IPXE file named after the machines MAC address or Hostname in the following format:

• Computers MAC is 02:42:7b:02:ba:59 - MAC-02427b02ba59.ipxe
• Computers Hostname is bootserver - HOSTNAME-bootserver.ipxe

Note, that to use the Hostname variable you will need to have a static DHCP lease setup in your router with the hostname variable set. Conventionally we recommend using the MAC address syntax.

This can be especially useful for a truly diskless desktop like described in Ubuntu's Old but still relevant guide . (you can skip everything regarding tftp and DHCP/dnsmasq setup) Arch also has good documentation on the subject . In essence you host your kernel/initramfs on an http endpoint using this image and during pre-init your root device is mounted from an NFS server.

Or if you want to image a machine unattended using something like Clonezilla they have basic boot snippets for tftp endpoints and how to run custom scripts.

netboot.xyz Special sauce

Network booting Operating systems even off the Internet is not a new concept. Boot snippets to load Linux installers from their own mirrors are provided for many major distributions and it is hard (usually unthanked) constant maintenance to keep all of those boot options up to date with external releases and changes.

One set of functionality that no one has provided before netboot.xyz is to lift network booting out of text consoles and up to the most modern Linux Live CDs. This is achieved through an effort to customize Live CD assets to be compatible with HTTPS endpoints and to host and maintain that list of assets:

For me personally I am comfortable working out of a complete Linux Desktop and me having the ability to boot into them as a recovery tool for the seemingly unending flow of broken computers that sneak their way into my house from family and friends is a lifesaver.
Having the ability to take the most popular Linux distros for a test drive at any time without dealing with downloads and USB sticks is pretty nice too.

Network Boot Unraid VMs (KVM)

Unraid has a very nice gui that allows managing kvm qemu VMs. With one manual modification (adding boot order to the network interface), the VMs on Unraid can be made to network boot.

First, let's create a new VM named LinuxVM with 4GB of ram, Q35-4.1 as the machine type and most importantly, utilizing SeaBIOS instead of OVMF (netbootxyz recommends using legacy bios for best results). For the hard drive, we'll let unraid create a 15G raw disk utilizing VirtIO (you can select your own size).

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Then we'll scroll to the bottom and deselect Start VM after creation because we still need to make one manual modification before the VM is started. We can now create the VM.

After creation, we'll right click on the VM and select Edit. Then we'll switch to the XML View via toggle at the top right.

When we scroll down to the disk section, we can see that it has boot order defined as 1.

However, there is no boot order defined for the network device. With the default settings, if SeaBIOS does not find a boot device, it will print an error and stall. We need to add a boot order to the network device as well, with a higher number than all the other drives so if SeaBIOS cannot find a boot drive, it will try network booting.

Here, since we only have one drive, we add a boot order 2 right under the model type for the network interface (add just that one line). Now we can hit Update and save the configuration. When the VM is started, it should boot netboot.xyz. After a distribution is installed to disk, the VM will no longer network boot and instead will boot from disk as its boot order is 1.

Pxe Image

iPXE is an open-source implementation of the Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) client firmware and bootloader, created in 2010 as a fork of gPXE.^[1] It can be used to enable computers without built-in PXE support to boot from the network, or to extend an existing PXE client implementation so it supports additional protocols.

While standardized PXE clients use TFTP to transfer data, non-standardized iPXE client firmware adds the ability to retrieve data through other protocols, including HTTP, iSCSI, ATA over Ethernet (AoE), and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Also, on supported hardware iPXE firmware can use a Wi-Fi link rather than requiring a wired connection. iPXE firmware cannot be considered as a 'drop-in' replacement for PXE firmware.

iPXE is the official replacement for gPXE. Any feature present in gPXE is also present in iPXE, and users can seamlessly upgrade from gPXE to iPXE.^[1]

PXE implementation[edit]

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iPXE can be booted by a computer either by replacing (re-flashing) the existing standard PXE ROM on a supported network interface card (NIC), or by booting the NIC's standard PXE ROM and then chainloading into the iPXE binary, thus obtaining its features without the need to re-flash a NIC. PXE firmware embeds its configuration script into the firmware image, thus any changes to the configuration require a NIC to be re-flashed.

iPXE implements its own PXE stack either by using the network card driver provided by iPXE, or the standard PXE UNDI driver if iPXE is chainloaded from a standard PXE ROM. Implementing an independent PXE stack allows clients without the standard PXE ROM on their NICs to use an alternative iPXE stack by loading it from an alternative medium.

Boot manager[edit]

Although its basic role was to implement a PXE stack, iPXE can be also used as a network boot manager with limited capabilities for menu-based interaction with end users. iPXE can fetch boot files using multiple network protocols, such as TFTP, NFS, HTTP or FTP.

iPXE can act as a boot loader for the Linux kernel, with support for multiboot. For other operating systems, for example Windows CE, iPXE chain-loads corresponding Microsoft boot loader. Additionally, iPXE is scriptable and can load COMBOOT and COM32 SYSLINUX extensions, which, for example, allows SYSLINUX-based graphical menu capabilities to be available for network booting.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

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External links[edit]

• Official website and source code repository