PXE booting with Netboot

Netboot gives you the opportunity to boot various operating system installers or utilities using iPXE. It will load a list of all your favorite Linux distros and will pull a fresh image of your choosing, from the internet to boot.

This post is just a very simple Docker Compose example on Netboot. There's nothing complicated about it, but its just really one of my favorite projects. It makes installing a new operating system or live booting a utility distro, a breeze.

As you can see in the gif below, when PXE booting Netboot, you are presented with a menu from where you can choose various Linux distributions to boot.

Netboot uses iPXE to pull fresh images from the internet. It also comes with a WebUI to refresh the list of images and even lets you configure or create your own menus.

Docker Compose¶

version: "3.8"
services:
  netbootxyz:
    image: linuxserver/netbootxyz
    container_name: netbootxyz
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
    volumes:
      - netboot-config:/config
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
      - 69:69/udp
      - 8080:80 #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  netboot-config:

You can find the WebUI on port 3000. The other port, 8080, is just a webserver where you can store any necessary config files like kickstarter or ignition files.

Configuring DHCP¶

ISC DHCP¶

Add the highlighted lines to your dhcpd.conf file in your subnet definition. Replace 10.0.0.27 with the IP of the host running Netboot.

subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    range 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.254;
    option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
    option broadcast-address 10.0.0.255;
    option routers 10.0.0.1;
    # option 66
    option tftp-server-name "10.0.0.27";
    next-server 10.0.0.27;
    # option 67
    option bootfile-name "netboot.xyz.kpxe";
}

Mikrotik¶

List the DHCP networks.

[admin@Mikrotik] > /ip dhcp-server network print detail 
Flags: D - dynamic 
 0   address=10.0.0.0/24 gateway=10.0.0.1 dns-server=8.8.8.8

/ip dhcp-server network set 0 next-server="10.0.0.27"
/ip dhcp-server network set 0 boot-file-name="netboot.xyz.kpxe"

Final notes¶

Remember to configure your boot settings in the BIOS to be able to boot in Legacy mode.