[SOLVED] Lightweight distro for PXE installation?

Atoss · 08-08-2021, 04:45 AM

After a multi-weekend struggle with wrapping my head around the intricacies of iPXE and dnsmasq, I finally have a working PXE server. To my dismay, it turns out that my usual distro of choice for old machines - Bodhi Linux - does not support installing over network. What distro could take its place? Requirements are running on 32-bit CPUs and 1 GB of RAM or less.

berndbausch · 08-08-2021, 08:50 AM

Alpine can PXE-boot, though the feature is marked as "prototypal". You also need to know that Alpine uses Busybox.

EDIT: I now see that you need installation from PXE. Unfortunately, I don't see PXE listed among the installation howtos.

shruggy · 08-08-2021, 09:32 AM

Debian has always supported a network installation.

shruggy · 08-08-2021, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atoss

it turns out that my usual distro of choice for old machines - Bodhi Linux - does not support installing over network.

Judging from the config provided by Serva, it does. Obviously, that would require some manual work. I never used Serva, but I successfully used DRBL (from the makers of Clonezilla and Gparted-live) in a similar manner.

Usually, if a distribution uses casper on its live iso image (which most Ubuntu-based distros including Bodhi do), then it can be made installed over network by extracting relevant files from the iso image and configuring PXE appropriately.

Atoss · 08-08-2021, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shruggy

Judging from the config provided by Serva, it does. Obviously, that would require some manual work. I never used Serva, but I successfully used DRBL (from the makers of Clonezilla and Gparted-live) in a similar manner.

Usually, if a distribution uses casper on its live iso image (which most Ubuntu-based distros including Bodhi do), then it can be made installed over network by extracting relevant files from the iso image and configuring PXE appropriately.

I'd tried it previously, with about the same args as in the Ubuntu Wiki article you linked, that only dropped me into an emergency login prompt, which asked for the root password (no idea what that is for a live session). Adding the showmounts and toram args mentioned in the Serva appnote did the trick, altho I suspect toram might cause problems in low RAM situations. Still far better than nothing. Thank you!

oui · 08-12-2021, 02:18 PM

https://slitaz.org perhaps?

(your can start the pxe loading with each event. available old SliTaz CD! if not, download one ISO at https://mirror.slitaz.org , mount it in a loop and copy the content on the main drive to install it FRUGAL (it is a matter of few minutes) and start it using grub and burn a CD with the tools all included in SliTaz. You can also use the Floppy Disk starter image from SliTaz for PXE if a FD drive available!