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Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

netboot.xyz

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Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#11

Post by theantonym »

rwmj wrote: post #10
abeyer wrote: post #6

Am I missing something or is there no documentation about what their distro/hardware support matrix looks like? Do I have to just boot into it and navigate the menus to figure that out?

https://netboot.xyz/docs/faq#what-operating-systems-are-curr... However they don't list the versions of each OS. As for hardware support, I guess it's i686/x86-64 only?

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.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#12

Post by RulerOf »

pyrolistical wrote: post #4

This is neat. It’s like Mac internet recovery mode but for everybody else

I've wondered for some time why none of the major OEMs have built this. Surely if I could embed an iPXE module into my board's BIOS with HTTPS support and a custom boot server that chainloads all of it logic from the internet, including a plethora of hardware support tools.

They could even tie the availability of premium internet-booted tools to the service tag and get that sweet SaaS subscription money.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#13

Post by jonathantf2 »

RulerOf wrote: post #12
pyrolistical wrote: post #4

This is neat. It’s like Mac internet recovery mode but for everybody else

I've wondered for some time why none of the major OEMs have built this. Surely if I could embed an iPXE module into my board's BIOS with HTTPS support and a custom boot server that chainloads all of it logic from the internet, including a plethora of hardware support tools. They could even tie the availability of premium internet-booted tools to the service tag and get that sweet SaaS subscription money.

Dell machines do this, if you boot to SupportAssist you can wipe and reload the drive from the BIOS, it'll download Windows for you. It even lets you log into your Microsoft account to get your BitLocker recovery key and restore all your files from your dead partition.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#14

Post by abeyer »

theantonym wrote: post #11
rwmj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://netboot.xyz/docs/faq#what-operating-systems-are-curr... However they don't list the versions of each OS. As for hardware support, I guess it's i686/x86-64 only?

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?

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#15

Post by latchkey »

This project looks neat. I boot well over 10,000 blade computers that don't have onboard storage, with iPXE. Kind of amazing technology. Had to develop our own super minimal Ubuntu distro though. Used a hacked up version of debirf to do it. Not sure this project offers what I need, which is a less hacked up version of debirf.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#16

Post by rtp4me »

kej wrote: post #7

Another neat "pick an OS to boot into" tool I discovered recently is Ventoy [1]. You install the bootable menu on your USB drive, and then you just drop ISOs or IMGs on there to add choices. [1] https://ventoy.net/en/index.html

Love Ventoy. Been using for a while now. Makes it very easy to boot a number of ISOs via simple USB drive. My go-to boot tool when doing system rescues.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#17

Post by theantonym »

abeyer wrote: post #14
theantonym wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#18

Post by rtp4me »

MarkovChain242 wrote: post #2

This is sort-of cool, I guess, but also very much not what you would want to do? I mean, people agitate against `curl blah.xyz | sh` for a reason. And this, by any measure, is much worse. Also: 'By default iPXE does not compile in HTTPS support'

I replaced our legacy PXE boot environment with Netboot, and it made a huge difference. The performance speed from tftp to http is night and day. Plus, you can compile a custom boot image to provide the exact boot environment you need.

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#19

Post by n0n »

latchkey wrote: post #15

This project looks neat. I boot well over 10,000 blade computers that don't have onboard storage, with iPXE. Kind of amazing technology. Had to develop our own super minimal Ubuntu distro though. Used a hacked up version of debirf to do it. Not sure this project offers what I need, which is a less hacked up version of debirf.

Can you elaborate, why you chose Ubuntu?

Alpine with lbu[0] seems like a perfect fit and looks IMHO less experimental. Also you can provide backups straight via iPXE[1].

Nonetheless, kudos for the slim ubuntu image :)

[0]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_local_backup

[1]: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/PXE_boot

Re: Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place

#20

Post by tssva »

csdvrx wrote: post #9
kej wrote: post #7

Another neat "pick an OS to boot into" tool I discovered recently is Ventoy [1]. You install the bootable menu on your USB drive, and then you just drop ISOs or IMGs on there to add choices. [1] https://ventoy.net/en/index.html

Not bad, but with questionable choices making it not usable on a dedicated hard-drive partition: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342

"Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files."

From the description of the project it doesn't seem running from a dedicated hard-drive partition is an actual goal of the project. I don't know that making choices which don't support a non-goal of a project are questionable.

It works great for my use case of booting from a USB drive and I very much appreciate that it exists.

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