[HN Gopher] Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one ...
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Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place
Author : metadat
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-06-20 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (netboot.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (netboot.xyz)
| abeyer wrote:
| 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?
| rwmj wrote:
| 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?
| theantonym wrote:
| 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.
| abeyer wrote:
| ~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?
| theantonym wrote:
| 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.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| This is neat. It's like Mac internet recovery mode but for
| everybody else
| RulerOf wrote:
| 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.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| 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.
| kej wrote:
| 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
| rtp4me wrote:
| 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.
| csdvrx wrote:
| Not bad, but with questionable choices making it not usable on
| a dedicated hard-drive partition:
|
| https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342
| tssva wrote:
| "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.
| latchkey wrote:
| 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.
| n0n wrote:
| 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
| MarkovChain242 wrote:
| 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'
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Space is at a premium on things like that. Having it makes some
| computers not boot ipxe.
| gorkish wrote:
| https://netboot.xyz/docs/selfhosting
| rtp4me wrote:
| 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.
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's why a serious user sets up their own server, serves the
| images that they have selected and checked, and doesn't serve
| outside of their known netspace.
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(page generated 2022-06-20 23:00 UTC)