Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> wrote (Mon, 17 Nov 2025 12:08:01 +0100):
>> Personally, I use the `di-netboot-assistant` package for maintaining the
>> images that I offer for TFTP booting. It allows one to configure things
>> once, and then trivially upgrade the images that are being offered (as
>> well as handling the added complexities, such as nonfree firmware,
>> signed images for secure boot, custom menu entries etc., if you
>> configure it to do so).
>>
>> It's possible to upgrade images and have something that boots by running
>> a couple of obvious commands, which means that I've forgotten most of
>> the details since I first set it up a few releases ago -- it should
>> definitely be suggested as the preferred option before describing all the
>> manual steps IMO.
>
> I'm not sure, maybe this is for advanced experience/developer level and
> not for the common user?
I don't think so.
Firstly, setting up PXE booting at all is hardly for the common user,
but if you're going to do it at all, you have the choice of doing all
the setup steps by hand ... and if you get any of them wrong, it just
doesn't work, often in a way that tells you very little about why not
until you get a packet sniffer out to see what is and isn't happening,
which requires one to know what is happening at quite a low level.
I used to do it that way about 20 years ago, and have lost most of the
details to the mists of time -- I'm not sad.
Alternatively, one can install di-netboot-assistant, and look at the
README, which includes:
=-=-=-=
QuickStart
----------
1. Install the 'di-netboot-assistant' package and a TFTP
server, for example 'dnsmasq' configured with
'enable-tftp' [2].
2. Run 'di-netboot-assistant install stable' or similar.
'di-netboot-assistant install' returns a list of netboot images
available for download and installation.
3. Configure a DHCP server, as explained in [1]. For further
information, read the 'architecture specific notes' below and
the example configuration samples [2].
For a more detailed example consult the 'README.installbox'.
=-=-=-=
You end up running something like:
di-netboot-assistant install stable
to put everything in the right place, then:
di-netboot-assistant fw-toggle stable
to include the nonfree firmware, and if you reconfigure things, one of:
di-netboot-assistant rebuild-grub
or
di-netboot-assistant rebuild-menu
ISTR that I also had to add a symlink or two from the top level tftpboot
dir into the ./d-i/n-a/ dir, but that's possibly a symptom of the fact
that I migrated from an existing setup rather than starting from
di-netboot-assistant from the start. If that is something that's always
needed then I guess that's a bug in di-netboot-assistant, which can be
reported and fixed and then newbies will not have to worry about that
bit either.
I installed this years before I tried a secure or UEFI network boot, and
di-n-a obviously grew support of that while I wasn't paying attention, so
IIRC all I had to do to get a machine to boot with that was one of the
rebuild steps, which then must have sorted out the signed EFI binaries
for me (which I only know anything about from the package's changelog)
> So probably not mention that as the preferred-for-all solution?
It seems unkind to beginners to not tell them about the easy option.
If there's an easier option than di-netboot-assistant then I'd love to
hear about it, but I'm pretty sure it's not doing it yourself by hand.
Cheers, Phil.
--
Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil
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