PXE booting a Pi 3 from a Pi configured as a PXE server?

[NickT]

My understanding is that the Pi 3 will offer network booting, which I think is synonymous with PXE.

Background:
A while ago I made my first version Pi act as a PXE server. I only have one machine (an ancient laptop) which can network boot and I can see that my Pi will offer it the options that I programmed in to its SD card (Ubuntu, Debian, Gparted ).

My question is:
Can I use that Pi to offer an option suitable for the Pi 3 to boot from?

All advice gratefully received. I don't own a Pi 3 at the moment but it may be something of interest in the new year.

[DougieLawson]

Yes. That's the way I demo'd it.

Get your RPi 3B booting from a USB stick first following the official instructions for that.

Poweroff. Pull the USB stick and insert that into RPi2B.

Install all the stuff from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo to get an NFS server working. Install dnsmasq.

mkdir /tftp
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /tftp
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /tftp/boot

Add /etc/exports

Code: Select all

/tftp *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)

Update /etc/fstab on the 2B with

Code: Select all

/dev/sda2 /tftp ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/sda1 /tftp/boot vfat defaults 0 0

Run dnsmasq with

Code: Select all

port=0
dhcp-range=10.1.2.10,10.1.2.40,300h
log-dhcp
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/tftp/boot
pxe-service=0,"Raspberry Pi Boot"

Update /etc/dhcpcd.conf on the 2B with

Code: Select all

interface eth0
static ip_address=10.1.2.99/24

Update /tftp/boot/cmdline.txt with

Code: Select all

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=10.1.2.99:/tftp elevator=deadline rootwait quiet splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles ip=dhcp

Reboot the RPi2B.

Connect the two Raspberries with a straight 568A to 568A CAT5 cable (or with a dedicated ethernet switch).

Boot the RPI3B and be amazed.

[NickT]

Thanks Dougie, I'll read that in detail later. Just one quick question : Will it work with my very first version Pi as the PXE server? That's the only Pi that I have permanently on with an Ethernet connection, as it serves as my print server at the moment. (It works OK to serve up Ubuntu/Debian options at the moment.)

[DougieLawson]

The PXE server can be anything (PC, laptop, Raspberry, Arduino, OpenWRT AP) with an ethernet interface running any flavour of Linux or roll-your-own operating system (that can run dnsmasq (for the PXE piece) and an nfs server (for the root filesystem)).

Obviously not an A, A+ or Zero (without extra hardware).