I need to do a EFI network (boot and) install, and I'm wondering if this
file (bootnetx64.efi) can help me. But there is no documentation on it
(except the suggestion in the install manual https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s05.en.html#dhcpd
"specify a boot loader appropriate for UEFI machines, for example...")

My problem is this: I can UEFI netboot using grubx64.efi. However, it
loads a standard grub.cfg which runs an interactive installer. I need
to preseed the install, and I need to load a different preseed file for
each server booted.

For non-uefi this is achieved using pxelinux's behaviour of tftp-ing a configuration based on MAC addresses etc. and fallback to a standard
location.

I'm wondering if grubx64.efi or bootnetx64.efi support similar
behaviour? Or else how to get specific information into the installer
(such as IP address and hostname), if not via specific pre-seed files
per machine?

(We can overwrite the grub.cfg each time with the needs of a specific
server, but this is not ideal, as it will cause a failure if more than
one machine is being net-installed at the same time.)

In general though I'm also looking for pointers to documentation. If
someone could point to anything that explains what bootnetx64.efi is and
what it does, I'd be happy to contribute that back to the wiki or
install manual.

--
Thanks,
Alex King

P.S.
I didn't find much relevant in the install manual except as mentioned above.

I didn't find bootnetx64.efi not mentioned in any of the following
locations:
* https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/FAQ
* /usr/share/doc/debian-installer-12-netboot-amd64, or any man pages in
the package
* https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller
* https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
* https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI
* https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bootnetx64.efi+debian+network+boot+uefi&t=ftsa&ia=web

https://wiki.debian.org/PXEBootInstall mentions using grubx64.efi for
the standard installer, but doesn't mention how to select a grub.cfg per machine.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 9/23/23 15:17, Alex King wrote:

I need to do a EFI network (boot and) install, and I'm wondering if
this file (bootnetx64.efi) can help me.  But there is no documentation
on it (except the suggestion in the install manual https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s05.en.html#dhcpd
"specify a boot loader appropriate for UEFI machines, for example...")

There are quite a few moving parts required to make this work.

My problem is this: I can UEFI netboot using grubx64.efi. However, it
loads a standard grub.cfg which runs an interactive installer.  I need
to preseed the install, and I need to load a different preseed file
for each server booted.

Yep, a custom grub.cfg file is needed.

For non-uefi this is achieved using pxelinux's behaviour of tftp-ing a configuration based on MAC addresses etc. and fallback to a standard location.

I'm wondering if grubx64.efi or bootnetx64.efi support similar
behaviour?  Or else how to get specific information into the installer
(such as IP address and hostname), if not via specific pre-seed files
per machine?

there are some settings in the dnsmasq config file to make some of this selection happen

(We can overwrite the grub.cfg each time with the needs of a specific
server, but this is not ideal, as it will cause a failure if more than
one machine is being net-installed at the same time.)

In general though I'm also looking for pointers to documentation. If
someone could point to anything that explains what bootnetx64.efi is
and what it does, I'd be happy to contribute that back to the wiki or
install manual.

For me, building a preseeded machine with efi boot became a complicated
affair involving grub config options, pxelinux options, dnsmasq, tftp,
partman, and various preseed files and options.  I ended up coding all
this into a large series of saltstack based state files to handle
building the related service files and automatically updating everything
as machines were added to the operation.

If you can read salt state files, I could see about showing my
repository, and you could derive whatever you can from it.

Raymond Burkholder
https://blog.raymond.burkholder.net/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Alex King <[email protected]> writes:

I need to do a EFI network (boot and) install, and I'm wondering if this file (bootnetx64.efi) can help me. But there is no documentation on it (except the suggestion in the install manual https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s05.en.html#dhcpd
"specify a boot loader appropriate for UEFI machines, for example...")

Not answering the question you actually asked, but hopefully this will
include hints that will allow you to get to where you want to be:

There is a package `di-netboot-assistant` that makes getting the server
side easy to setup for net booting -- When attempting to get EFI network booting setup, I was mostly failing to get the details right until I
tried using that, at which point it all just worked :-)

As for getting a machine to be configured depending upon which machine
it is, you can do something MAC based with PXE or EFI network boots, so
for EFI one can have a host specific config in a file called something
like this in your tftpserver:

/var/lib/tftpboot/d-i/n-a/grub/grub.cfg-01-3c-97-01-23-45-67

although I generally only do that to make the automatic boot option
happen without requiring one to hit return, rather than customising the machine's setup in there. Instead, I use the machine name that gets
assigned via DHCP/DNS to make the decisions about what to install.

That's how things generally get done with my preseeding framework:

https://hands.com/d-i/

For example, if I set up DHCP to hand out the name 'oem.hk.hands.com' to
a machine, and set the grub config to do an automatic install while
setting `url=https://hands.com/d-i/` on the kernel command line, then
the framework automatically pulls in extra config from these two places:

https://hands.com/d-i/preseed/local/_hostname/hk.hands.com/oem/
https://hands.com/d-i/preseed/local/_users/_hostname/hk.hands.com/oem

which causes it to install Gnome, with a de-DE default locale + several
other locales installed, into a LVM partition scheme, where the first
user info will be prompted for after the first boot, and with a network
console via ssh being available during the install.

Cheers, Phil.
--
Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil

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