Network Boot One Raspberry Pi From Another One - No SD Card needed using PXE Boot, TFTP & NFS

It is possible to boot a Raspberry Pi over the local area network (LAN) and so remove the need for an SD card. In this video I show how to boot a Raspberry Pi from another Raspberry Pi using PXE along with its friends TFTP and NFS.




#garyexplains

[JimMendenhall]

Yes please, please make a video showing how to boot form a synology nas, etc!

[LegacyInBlood]

This is the best tutorial out there period!!!!
Please do a tutorial for Linux and windows as a server and raspberry pi as client

[davidg]

Yes, do a PXE video of various systems, please!

[sujithsuresh]

So many quality contents still not getting enough subscibers this guy deserve to have atleast 10 M subscribers

[pfitz]

I would interested in a video showing how to boot form a Synology NAS.

[gunterpietzsch]

This really sounds interesting and I would like to check this out. But unfortunatly at the moment I couldn't even order some PIs as there are none available. So watching this videos is somehow like window shopping. But this is not your fault - so please goahead with your great YouTube channel.

[John.z]

Thank you for the training. I am still scratching my head about how I will use it... although I have a 24x7 Raspberry Pi 4 server running.

[cenuijza]

Thanks for the video! I would like to see a version where you boot from iSCSI instead of NFS, and maybe using LVM and thin provisioning on the server side to provide the iSCSI block devices 🙏

[fasti]

Yes, please do make a video on how to boot tie pi from TrueNAS

[ASFokkema]

Cool video, love the idea! could you also explain how to set this up for multiple cliënts on multiple architectuur?

[dubz]

FYI: There is a tool you can flash from Raspberry Pi Imager that takes only a minute or so, then boot it up. It will change the boot order for you with zero intervention. This is especially helpful if you have several Pis to change, as once it's created you just boot to it and wait for the fast green flashing light (anything else is an error code). It takes seconds to reconfigure this way. Overall still much faster than installing Raspbian OS, booting, configuring, and rebooting just to change one setting.

Edit: Same goes for USB boot, or reverting back. Flash the option you want, boot, done.

[BOBRAPHTONEAFWATA]

Hello @Gary Explains can you show in the next video, if possible how android aosp can also be booted from a network in the same manner ?

[pepeshopping]

PXE boot has always only needed the MAC address.

[jeffsadowski]

Did this about a year ago. I have an ubuntu VM that I point my pi's to.

[joegee]

Yeah, I think I'd like to do this from a Qnap NAS. I have a couple utility RPis, print server, Pi hole, and want to add some more for VPN, Home Automation, cameras, etc.

[daves]

Yes please make a video to show booting from a qnap Nas and how to configure using Ansible

[rodnussbaumer]

Pretty good video, but it would be nice to see more of the configuration aspects, especially on the server side. I know, there are numeorus server platforms that can be used, but one can usually extrapolate from one setup to another. A question: can the PXE bootloader use an initramfs/initrd in-memory filesystem, rather than NFS mounted root filesystem? Where would you specify that? In x86 PXE, the PXE bootloader uses a configuration file that allows you to specify the filesystem image to retrieve from the TFTP server. It seems like the PXE bootloader is a permanent part of the Pi, rather than downloaded from the TFTP server. Is there a PXE bootloader for the Pi, which would work in a similar way?

[samaitcheson]

Hi Gary. A video on booting a Pi from a QNAP NAS would be great. Thanks.

[CMDRunematti]

Hah i finally found this video again! I just got a Synology Nas and pi4 8gb, definitely gonna do this. Maybe even this week!

[fabioamado]

Hello, I would like a video tutorial of booting from a Synology NAS, from a linux PC, from a Mac, from a Windows PC... Thank you :)