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  • #16236

Closed
Open
Opened Dec 22, 2018 by beta-tester@beta-tester

issue: PXE boot does not work

Originally created by @beta-tester on #16236 (Redmine)

hi,

i have a tiny project where i setup a PXE server to let PCs pxe boot into several different linux live systems.

but when i add Tails 3.11 to the server and try to pxe boot into Tails, the PC get stuck at boot process.

because of Tails is based on Debian (or Ubuntu?) i tried out the boot parameters of those linux distributions for Tails.
Debian and Ubuntu i can PXE boot without problems. so why is PXE boot Tails a problem?

under https://redmine.tails.boum.org/code/issues/11044 it was mentioned, that it must be an issue of Debian and the team of Tails don’t have the man-power to fix it…
but Debian (8.x .. 9.x) does PXE boot very well and Ubuntu (16.x .. 19.x) does it as well, so something must be broken in Tails.

i found something interesting on the following webpage https://www.vercot.com/~serva/an/NonWindowsPXE3.html
there is a customized initrd file for Tails 3.8. unfortunately i don’t have access to Tails 3.8 anymore and that customized initrd isn’t compatible with the actual Tails version, because of different kernel version. but maybe you could aske the maker of that customized initrd file to implement that into the main tails release. or if you have access to Tails 3.8, you can watch the diffs of the original and customized initrd.

please add pxe support… thank you.

here the link to my project https://github.com/beta-tester/RPi-PXE-Server

here the PXE-menu entry i tried:

########################################
## INFO: https://www.com-magazin.de/praxis/nas/multi-boot-nas-server-232864.html?page=10_tails-vom-nas-booten
## NOT WORKING
LABEL tails-x64
    MENU LABEL Tails x64
    KERNEL http://pxe-server/nfs/tails-x64/live/vmlinuz
    INITRD http://pxe-server/nfs/tails-x64/live/initrd.img
    APPEND nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/srv/nfs/tails-x64 ro netboot=nfs boot=live config -- locales=de_DE.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=de utc=no timezone=Europe/Berlin
    #APPEND  boot=live config live-media=removable nopersistence noprompt timezone=Etc/UTC block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=1000 splash noautologin module=Tails slab_nomerge slub_debug=FZP mce=0 vsyscall=none page_poison=1 union=aufs netboot=cifs nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/srv/nfs/tails-x64 ipby=dhcp NFSOPTS=-ouser=serva,pass=avres,sec=ntlm,vers=1.0,ro ro ip=dhcp ro ipv6.disable=1
    TEXT HELP
        Boot to Tails x64 Live (modprobe r8169; exit)
    ENDTEXT

the Tails iso is mounted via /etc/fstab:

/srv/iso/tails-x64.iso  /srv/nfs/tails-x64  auto  ro,nofail,auto,loop  0  10

the mounted Tails iso content nfs exported via /etc/exports

/srv/nfs/tails-x64  *(ro,async,no_subtree_check,root_squash,mp,fsid=345e2088-04f8-11e9-91c7-e716ee7b802b)

and also locally available via

http://pxe-server/nfs/tails-x64

Attachments

  • Screenshot1.png
  • Screenshot2.png
  • Screenshot3.png
  • Screenshot4.png

Related issues

  • Is duplicate of sysadmin#11044 (closed)
Edited May 21, 2020 by beta-tester
To upload designs, you'll need to enable LFS and have admin enable hashed storage. More information
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Reference: tails/tails#16236