We are definitely willing to add NetBSD if someone can demonstrate it working well with iPXE. It's come up several times and it's implementation works with pxelinux in a local setting but not so well with iPXE as the implementation linked looks for a specific file on a tftp source.
There is ARM support as well in addition to i686/x86-64. Operating system versions are typically dropped as they go EOL upstream from the menu, we try and keep the menus up to date as changes and new versions are released.
~Given that it's already there (and presumably maintained) in the github readme, it might make sense to also provide this info on the docs site.~ Nevermind, I'd found the github link first, not sure how I missed it on the site.
What's the state of arm64 booting like? Last I looked at early boot process on arm (which was admittedly a while ago) it was kind of a mess w/o a broadly adopted standard like uefi and every processor/soc/board kind of did its own thing. Has that improved to the point where I can expect _any_ arm64 board to just work? Or do I need to worry about the specific hardware, too?
Arm booting is unfortunately still a mess, but at least for server-class machines there's been some adoption of SBSA/SBBR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architectur...). Of course server-class machines are not the same as the cheap tat that everyone buys. You can install SBSA/SBBR-compliant firmware for your Raspberry Pi 4 (https://github.com/pftf) but it's not the default.
Most of my testing was just allocating an ARM machine on Equinix Metal as I didn't have much ARM hardware to test or qualify on. I've also gotten the bootloader and menu to work with an RPI4 but loading operating systems on one was a bit more challenging given reduced memory on the hardware.
Sounds like Spotify is trying to make is as hard as possible for the coming exodus to Apple One as there is more perceived value in the Apple bundles than just paying for a single Spotify music subscription.
Hi, owner of https://netboot.xyz here. netboot.xyz has https support, with http support still being in place for those that don't have https support compiled into iPXE as it's not compiled by default. I'd recommend checking out the site directly if this is something that interests you. All of the source code running the site is on github as well and we're always open to contributions. We also always try to retrieve the installer kernels directly from the OS supported mirrors when possible so that they are pulled from trusted sources.
Hi, thanks for the work! I believe I first discovered netboot.xyz on a show HN. I have set up the DHCP in my lab to serve netboot.xyz, so I can experiment with different OS'es without much hassle. It has been great so far.
netboot.xyz is great! My main use case is to boot things off of drac/ilo etc. If you have a remote server hosted in a datacenter and have struggled to use drac's virtual iso feature, boot the netboot iso. Since it's tiny, it works great for booting, and it switches to the primary NIC once the OS is booting. If you try to use your full iso with drac, it will be painfully slow because it goes through several layers of indirection (reverse proxies set up by your provider, the weird drac driver etc.)
Do you serve the main images over tftp and is it reliable? We have been building an NBD server with this use case in mind and had on and off discussions with Foreman people about a similar case. In theory NBD should be much more efficient since it will only serve the main image on demand (but if you want you can still use it like tftp by copying /dev/nbd0 to a ram disk at boot). It also supports TLS.
most tftpd (note: not ftpd or sftpd) were really not intended to be exposed to the traffic of a public internet connection. They're for stuff like serving an image to a voip phone that is booting on a LAN with tftp parameters to go and get a .xml provisioning file.
Does this mean I can use this to boot ISOs off my home server? That would be great for installing Ubuntu, for example. Is there a guide on how to do this somewhere?
Yeah, I originally wrote boot.rackspace.com. I built netboot.xyz based on a lot of that original code, expanded what Operating Systems and Utilities it supported, and wanted to make it a more open project for everyone to take advantage of.
Dev here. The project is just a bunch of iPXE scripts that understands how each distro works and routes you to their hosted bits or a trusted mirror once you select the image. I've tried to keep all of the code on Github and the Travis CI deployment out in the open for that very reason. A project like this needs to be highly visible in order to be trusted to a degree. I also have things like image verification and https support on the list of things to do.
