Give Your PXE wings! Bootstrapping Explained
summary
Explains PXE as a multi-stage network bootstrap and shows a working stack: Digital Rebar plus a sledgehammer RAM-only OS for fast discovery, iPXE for HTTP boot, Kickstart/cloud-init for post-install, and image deployment (tar/packer images) as a faster, more resilient alternative to netboot. Demonstrates writing compressed disk images, partitioning, rebooting successfully, and using kexec kernel switch to skip slow firmware posts. Covers secure-boot/TPM pitfalls and a proven Raspberry Pi PXE setup used in edge lab.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Intro
- 2:10Exploring Provisioning Approaches
- 4:05Bootstrapping is a multi-stage process
- 5:13Then: Download a Bootloader
- 6:46Finally load a "real" operating system
- 10:55And then you can actually connect to start configuring the system!
- 11:17Automating Provisioning means Connecting all these steps together
- 15:38Typical PXE Questions
- 19:21Image Based Deployment (10x faster!)
- 21:41Immutable Provisioning
- 23:29ESXi Provisioning
- 25:28ONIE: Open Network Install Environment
- 27:06kexec (kernel execute)
- 29:56Secure Boot Required SIGNED Bootloaders
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