[ipxe-devel] iPXE and booting ISOs over the network

[Adam Baxter]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2020, at 00:48, IT1 Stuart Blake Tener, USNR wrote:
> 

> List members,
> 
> I have done a number of web searches and am interested in gaining some insights into what choices I have in implementing iPXE to boot ISO files directly (I have read several postings that were 6 to 10 years old in this area but no code was really given just oh I did this, I did that). I had asked in an IRC channel a while ago (they are so useless, people ignoring your question and trying to find a different question you should be asking because that is what they can answer), and got a bunch of discouraging replies. 
> 

Careful there, a few of the people you're calling useless are on this list.

> 

> It is my understanding that iPXE/PXE can do this quite easily, but then I was given a ton of reasons on the IRC why it would not work so I gave up in frustration trying to sort "IRC wheat from IRC chaff".
> 

PXE has nothing to do with your ISOs, PXE is just a standard way of booting a machine from DHCP/TFTP. iPXE adds some nice stuff like HTTP on top of that (so does UEFI sometimes, but now we're really offtopic)

One of the reasons you might have had pushback from IRC is that it's not clear if you really need to boot ISOs (which can be done in a not-quite-reliable way through sanboot/memdisk) or whether you're just needing a whole lot of boot options - which can be done in a supported way by grabbing the distro netboot/pxeboot files and putting them in a directory. Have a look at https://netboot.xyz for this idea taken to an extreme.
> 

> 
> My thought is to create a private 192.168.100.0/24 network in this environment I propose, and for the server to have TFTP, DNS, and whatever else is requisite installed there within. I think I'd like to use Debian to do it, but am open to whatever distribution people think will make this most easiest.
> 

Yes Debian will work - I recommend dnsmasq for this.

So to recap:

* Have a think about whether you really want to boot ISOs through sanboot or memdisk. I mean, it's worth trying just to see what does and doesn't work and the different ways it can break

* Download the pxeboot files for whatever distro and put them in a folder where a tftpd or webserver can get to them. You'll still need a tftp server for the initial loading of iPXE (unless you use iPXE as your virtual NIC firmware or via an iPXE ISO, but I'd stick with tftp for now)


--Adam
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