97b0ae26f7
While the word 'simply' is usually added to encourage readers, it often has the opposite effect and may even appear condescending, especially when the reader runs into trouble trying to apply the suggestions from the documentation. It is almost always an improvement to simply drop the word from the sentence. (there are more possible improvements like this, we can apply those in separate PRs)
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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 want to add the NixOS installer as another option. To build the necessary files from your current version of nixpkgs, you can run:
nix-build -A netboot.x86_64-linux '<nixpkgs/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.