Booting from TFTP

If you want to utilize netboot.xyz from your home or office network, it's relatively easy to set up. It will allow all of your devices on your network to have netboot.xyz available whenever you need it by just changing the boot order on your device, selecting network boot, or manually selecting the device to boot.

DHCP Server Setup

You will have to tell your DHCP server to provide a "next-server", the address of a TFTP server on your network, and a "filename", the netboot.xyz boot file (you can choose among different architecture systems here. When your clients boot up, if they are set to network boot, they'll automatically get a valid DHCP address, pull down the netboot.xyz iPXE bootloader and load up the Operating System menu.

Example:

next-server "1.2.3.4"
filename "netboot.xyz.kpxe"

If you are using dnsmasq as your DHCP server as well as your TFTP server then setting the next-server option is as simple as adding the following line to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

dhcp-option=66,"0.0.0.0"

0.0.0.0 is parsed as the address of the machine running dnsmasq.

TFTP Server Setup

You will need to set up a tftp server to host the iPXE files. There are various types of TFTP servers out there and they all usually work pretty well. You can also use dnsmasq to host the files as well.

If you use dnsmasq you can add this configuration to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

enable-tftp
tftp-root=/var/lib/tftp
dhcp-boot=netboot.xyz.kpxe

Fixing the dnsmasq service

If you are running systemd and you can start dnsmasq fine manually but it fails to start at boot you may need to edit the [Unit] section of /lib/systemd/system/dnsmasq.service by changing:

After=network.target

to

After=network-online.target 

Regular and Undionly Boot Files

If you experiencing issues with the regular netboot.xyz.kpxe bootloader, you can try and use the netboot.xyz-undionly.kpxe bootloader. The regular bootloader includes common NIC drivers in the iPXE image, while the undionly loader will piggyback off the NIC boot firmware.