PXEboot into an Ubuntu installer

Readme.md

Netboot Talos and headless ubuntu with iPXE and netboot.xyz

1. Download the iso, extract the files /casper/initrd and /casper/vmlinuz, place them alongside the iso so they can be served over the network. In my case, I use nginx and the base: http://pi.nas.home:8888/ubuntu/
2. create and serve the metadata, for example: http://pi.nas.home:8888/ubuntu/metadata; create the user-data and the (empty) meta-data file
3. Add a MAC-specific .ipxe file to netboot.xyz, called exactly MAC-<mac_with_no_:>.ipxe
4. Boot the machine, wait a little then log in with ubuntu-server user and r00tme password, or using the installer and the SSH key (you can exit the installer from the help menu).

For Talos/Omni

1. Create the installtion media from Omni, grab the PXE URL, paste it in the browser and copy paste the #ipxe file in netboot.xyz (using the same MAC convention)
2. Boot the machine and see it appear in Omni!

Note the INSTALLER_META_BASE64 string contains a base64-encode version of the tags, you don't need to regenerate the image to change them. For example, MHhjPW1hY2hpbmVMYWJlbHM6CiAgcHhlOiAnJwogIGhvbWU6ICcnCg== is equal to

0xc=machineLabels:
  pxe: ''
  home: ''

this adds the pxe and home tags.

Unifi Setup

Make sure you set the next server tot he IP of the netboot instance and the file to netboot.xyz.efi; at first I tried the .ikpxe file but was too big for the legacy boot loaders; once I switch all machines to UEFI boot the error went away.

MAC-f44d30666baf.ipxe

#!ipxe
# ubuntu plucky penguin

# $seedfrom used to find the user-data and meta-data files by nocloud-net provider for cloud-init.
# the trailing slash is important, the cloud-init sticks 'meta-data' or 'user-data' right after it, without prepending a forward slash.
set seedfrom http://pi.nas.home:8888/ubuntu/metadata

# $base url is where the vmlinuz and initrd live.
# they were fished out from the live-server iso file. the iso file is also in this directory.
set base http://pi.nas.home:8888/ubuntu/

kernel ${base}/vmlinuz initrd=initrd autoinstall url=${base}/plucky-live-server-amd64.iso net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 ip=dhcp ds=nocloud;s=${seedfrom}
initrd ${base}/initrd
boot

talos.ipxe

#!ipxe

kernel http://pi.nas.home:8888/talos/talos-kubespaces-1.9.2-amd64 talos.platform=metal console=tty0 init_on_alloc=1 slab_nomerge pti=on consoleblank=0 nvme_core.io_timeout=4294967295 printk.devkmsg=on ima_template=ima-ng ima_appraise=fix ima_hash=sha512 talos.environment=INSTALLER_META_BASE64=REDACTED== siderolink.api=https://kubespaces.siderolink.omni.siderolabs.io?grpc_tunnel=false&jointoken=REDACTED talos.events.sink=[fdae:41e4:649b:9303::1]:8090 talos.logging.kernel=tcp://[fdae:41e4:649b:9303::1]:8092
initrd http://pi.nas.home:8888/talos/talos-kubespaces-1.9.2-amd64.xz
boot

user-data

#cloud-config
# set password to r00tme
chpasswd:
    expire: false
    list:
        - ubuntu-server:$6$.c38i4RIqZeF4RtR$hRu2RFep/.6DziHLnRqGOEImb15JT2i.K/F9ojBkK/79zqY30Ll2/xx6QClQfdelLe.ZjpeVYfE8xBBcyLspa/
ssh_authorized_keys:
    -