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Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

bootimus.com

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Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#31

Post by internet2000 »

srcreigh wrote: post #21

Last year I released my version of this: https://pxehost.com Pxehost is much less featureful than Bootimus, no dashboard, and only supports netboot.xyz. I am curious how Bootimus got udp broadcast to work via Docker on arm macOS. I could not figure that out and it’s why I released pxehost as a cross platform binary. We need a good ISO to set up new hosts to run firecracker VMs in k3s. That would be a killer homelab t…

> I am curious how Bootimus got udp broadcast to work via Docker on arm macOS. I could not figure that out and it’s why I released pxehost as a cross platform binary.

Going by the Github, I'd be that it was Claude who figured it out. Which yeah, checks out.

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#32

Post by e12e »

iwontberude wrote: post #24
srcreigh wrote: post #21

Last year I released my version of this: https://pxehost.com Pxehost is much less featureful than Bootimus, no dashboard, and only supports netboot.xyz. I am curious how Bootimus got udp broadcast to work via Docker on arm macOS. I could not figure that out and it’s why I released pxehost as a cross platform binary. We need a good ISO to set up new hosts to run firecracker VMs in k3s. That would be a killer homelab t…

NetBoot.xyz is one of the most sketch projects on the internet, yeah nope nope nope.

Even if self hosted?

https://netboot.xyz/docs/selfhosting/

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#33

Post by e12e »

iwontberude wrote: post #25
LetMeLogin wrote: post #14

There's also https://netboot.xyz which is quite cool too.

It’s so sketch… anyone who trusts NetBoot.xyz is asking to be pwned. You need to serve your own iPXE files and cached ISOs.

... Via netboot.xyz?

https://netboot.xyz/docs/selfhosting/

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#34

Post by sscaryterry »

betaporter wrote: post #29
sscaryterry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is disclosure a "should"? Nobody asks if you were stark-naked whilst coding it, high on drugs, having a bad day or any other arbitrary question. Disclosure is something the author volunteered, its his freedom to do with HIS creation as he wishes. Get off your soapbox.

Moving forward, perhaps I should state that, "I was fully clothed while preparing this PR."

I usually am not...

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#35

Post by happyPersonR »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #13
happyPersonR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah all of these rely on layer 2 or dhcp relay and are really ipv4 only solutions. Not to discount what the fog guys had… love what they made :) Look at ironic for something better. What we eventually ended up with after a couple of iterations was decidedly better for our use case :) But sadly doesn’t exist in the outside world yet :(.

Could you share your case's details? It sounds like you wanted better L3/IPv6 support and figured out a clean way to achieve it.

Yes!!

So.... worked at a telco on a telco cloud solution, and ipv4 addresses are expensive.

LAN/RFC1918 doesn't work at scale of hundreds/thousands of data centers(each central office was a data center)

as such ipv6...

Still had some legacy tools that relied on ipv4, but ipv6 was basically the only way to fix some of their issues with data normalization in their IPAM etc.

Also, having to provision and manage these servers with people and flash drives and keyboards and bios settings was suboptimal. Insert multiple racks ... hundreds of them inside the same data center, multiple vlan's(reasons) some good ... some not ... l2 at that scale had issues.

Wanted to just turn them on with a firmware/boot agent that would connect to a provisioning server and download their OS and bios settings.

as such we built something that was basically the replacement for an iDRAC/ILO :) and ran on actual factual ipv6 first.

some nic's still let you burn into the ROM your own boot loader... can't say more for NDA reasons though I doubt anyone is using this as the whole product got subsumed by the public cloud push.

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#36

Post by als0 »

iwontberude wrote: post #24
srcreigh wrote: post #21

Last year I released my version of this: https://pxehost.com Pxehost is much less featureful than Bootimus, no dashboard, and only supports netboot.xyz. I am curious how Bootimus got udp broadcast to work via Docker on arm macOS. I could not figure that out and it’s why I released pxehost as a cross platform binary. We need a good ISO to set up new hosts to run firecracker VMs in k3s. That would be a killer homelab t…

NetBoot.xyz is one of the most sketch projects on the internet, yeah nope nope nope.

What is sketchy about it? I think you know something the rest of us don't.

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#37

Post by sneak »

betaporter wrote: post #6

Has anyone else noticed how readily identifiable AI generated text is? This is a very cool project, and I suppose it's hard to know for sure, but everything about the site describing the project "feels" AI generated to me. I do not say this to detract from the value of the project or its very interesting nature, by the way. Just an orthogonal observation.

https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/prompts/src/branch/main/prompts/LL...

Re: Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

#40

Post by theandrewbailey »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #38

Curious why they'd go for DHCP instead of DHCPv6 for something new in 2026. Is there firmware around that still doesn't support IPv6, or is it simply that PXE over IPV6 isn't that common in general?

I PXE boot random old consumer grade laptops and desktops at work constantly (refurb department at an ewaste recycling company). PXE over IPv6 support is practically universal.
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