Netboot

This is the fourth part of the Pi netboot series. Find the previous parts from the introductory article here. In this part of the series, I will go over using a combination of HashiCorp Packer and Ansible to create an Ubuntu Linux image for a netbootable Raspberry Pi, using NFS for the boot partition and a Ceph RBD as the root device. The goal here is to show you how to set up Packer and what configuration is needed to run an Ansible playbook in an aarch64 image on a x86_64 machine. While writing the article, I realized that it had already gotten pretty long, so I will move the description of the Ansible playbook as well as the final image deployment to future articles. ...

This is the third part of my Pi netboot series. You can find an overview and links to the other parts in the Pi netboot series overview article. This, to me, is the most interesting article of the entire netboot Pi series. When I started with setting up netbooting, I had no idea how it would work. I had a vague idea that there was a kernel command line parameter, but no idea where it was interpreted. Now, I know that the early boot and the initramfs are not voodoo magic, but just that most mundane of Linux tech: Shell scripts. 😅 That was another magic Linux moment for me: Huh, it’s really that simple? ...

In this article, I will provide an overview of how netbooting with the Raspberry Pi 4 works and how to configure a server off of which you can boot your Pi. Several components are needed for netbooting a Pi: The Pi itself needs to have netbooting in its boot order config A DHCP server is needed to provide IPs for the Pi and the TFTP server. In this series, the IP for the Pi will be provided by my OPNsense firewall and the netboot options will be provided by DNSmasq. A TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server to provide the boot files Prerequisites For this article, the following things are assumed to be present: ...

In this multipart series, I will be detailing how I set up a Raspberry Pi 4 to netboot, with no local SD card/eMMC/other storage required. The setup will use Ceph to provide both, NFS storage for the /boot partition, and an RBD volume for the root disk. For the PXE netboot itself, DNSmasq will be used. Part II: The Netboot Server Part III: Telling Linux Where to Boot From Part IV: Using Packer and Ansible to create a Raspberry Pi Ubuntu Netboot Image Part V: Ansible Playook Part VI: Conclusion Why though? So why would you want a diskless Pi? First of all, the standard option for Raspberry Pi storage is either an SD card or, for Pi CM4 modules, eMMC storage. Both have the same downsides: Their performance is relatively slow, and they are not very durable, wearing out relatively quickly under any but the lightest write loads. ...