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I am looking for a way to boot an ISO image over a network from a machine running Linux in order to install multiple Linux distributions without the need of burning or writing anything.

I would be interested in installing it without having to directly connect the machines or use a network card. The machines are connected to the same router running DD WRT firmware.

So for example: the hosting machine would have a 32 bit Lubuntu ISO in a directory, the target machine would go into network boot and boot from that ISO in order to install it.

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  • Does it really have to be an unmodified ISO image? Unpacking it and using NFS is much better. Also, please restrict yourself to a single topic per question.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Dec 5, 2015 at 8:20
  • no, not at all, as long as it is possible to take an ISO image and get it over the network somehow.
    – Anonycube
    Commented Dec 5, 2015 at 8:26
  • what you want is called a DHCP+NFS server. this is quiet broard as a question.
    – Archemar
    Commented Dec 5, 2015 at 8:54

1 Answer 1

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Different distros (Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, Suse, etc) present differences when packing their distros, plus Linux live distributions are packed in a completely different way than discrete component based Linux distributions. As you can see there is not a standardized Linux distro format therefore there's not a single size solution that fits all the possible scenarios.

Besides the former distro "format" problem you also have different levels of PXE (Network Boot/Install capabilities) support among distros and its flavors. You can go from very good support in RHEL to very bad in Gentoo and the ones in between like Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

For all of the above every distro must be treated as a single entity and it has a particular approach to make it PXE friendly.

Serva is an automated PXE server that has done this for all the major Linux distributions. You can take Serva's approach and implement it in your Linux Server. (I'm related to Serva development)

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  • I wonder why a negative? please help me to improve my answer disclosing the reason of it.
    – Pat
    Commented Dec 7, 2015 at 12:13
  • IMHO, Ubuntu (and derivatives) has excellent built-in support for booting via PXE+NFS.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Dec 8, 2015 at 13:47
  • I think you do not know much about the topic. i.e. Ubuntu and Debian have both an ancient ipconfig bug that prevents PXE working correctly on certain environments. bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/klibc/+bug/1327412 . PXE is not only NFS; Ubuntu/Debian have broken CIFS support on certain distros even when the cifs.ko is always there. Both things have been reported years ago they never fixed the thing. Then No; Ubuntu/Debian PXE support is not as good as i.e. RHELs. That's it.
    – Pat
    Commented Dec 8, 2015 at 16:42
  • downvoted for obvious attempt to shill for your company
    – airtonix
    Commented Oct 23, 2022 at 5:09
  • @Pat I lol'd. But seriously though, your character assassination technique needs work to be honest.
    – airtonix
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 4:21

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