Not today...

For a personal project I want to iPXE boot alpine. I did not found any step by step guide, so I ended up testing multiple solutions until it works. This post is a “copy” of the answer I made here for the netboot.xyz project.

To fix this issue I used a bunch of thread and resources but here are the three main entry used:

• Alpine documentation to create a custom ISO image: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/How_to_make_a_custom_ISO_image
• Alpine documentation for the network boot: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/PXE_boot
• This post on the Alpine forum from a guy who managed to successfully boot from PXE: https://forum.alpinelinux.org/forum/installation/boot-pxe

Now here is the process to make all of this work:

• clone the alpine-iso git repo

• cd to the directory and create the following two files:

  • alpine-pxe.packages which will be empty (those packages are installed in the iso not in the initrd)

  • alpine-pxe.conf.mk with the following content:

     ```text
     ALPINE_NAME     := alpine-pxe
     KERNEL_FLAVOR   := grsec
     INITFS_FEATURES := ata base bootchart squashfs ext4 usb virtio network dhcp
     MODLOOP_EXTRA   :=
     ```
    

    some options may not be needed, I did not had the time to check this correctly, virtio and network are needed according to the wiki

• create the image following the instructions here and pass your new profile: make PROFILE=alpine-pxe

• start a simple http server in isotmp.alpine-pxe/isofs/boot/ the ipxe boot will need the two following files:

  • initramfs-grsec
  • vmlinuz-grsec

• create your ipxe script with an adaptation of the following to your own url

  #!ipxe
  
  dhcp
  
  set base-url http://192.168.122.0:5050
  set kernel-params ip=dhcp modules=loop,squashfs,usb-storage nomodeset
  
  kernel ${base-url}/vmlinuz-grsec ${kernel-params}
  initrd ${base-url}/initramfs-grsec
  
  boot
  

  Here again I am not sure that all the options are needed, still have to perform some tests.

• start your network boot!