Booting from the netboot
media (PXE)
Advanced users may wish to install NixOS using an existing PXE or
iPXE setup.
These instructions assume that you have an existing PXE or iPXE
infrastructure and simply want to add the NixOS installer as another
option. To build the necessary files from a recent version of
nixpkgs, you can run:
nix-build -A netboot.x86_64-linux nixos/release.nix
This will create a result directory containing: *
bzImage – the Linux kernel *
initrd – the initrd file *
netboot.ipxe – an example ipxe script
demonstrating the appropriate kernel command line arguments for this
image
If you’re using plain PXE, configure your boot loader to use the
bzImage and initrd files and
have it provide the same kernel command line arguments found in
netboot.ipxe.
If you’re using iPXE, depending on how your HTTP/FTP/etc. server is
configured you may be able to use netboot.ipxe
unmodified, or you may need to update the paths to the files to
match your server’s directory layout.
In the future we may begin making these files available as build
products from hydra at which point we will update this documentation
with instructions on how to obtain them either for placing on a
dedicated TFTP server or to boot them directly over the internet.