ipxe.cloudcompute.com

Network boot bare-metal machines. From power-on to running workloads in minutes.

Available Boot Options

Debian 13 — Trixie netinstall (x86_64)

Debian 13 — Trixie netinstall (ARM64)

sbnb Linux (Experimental) — AI-ready Linux for bare-metal GPUs (UEFI only, x86_64)

Quick Start

Option 1: Docker Bootstrap (managed machines)

Run the bootstrap container on your network. It answers PXE only for the MACs you allowlist, serves iPXE over TFTP, and relays each boot request to this service with a server-side bearer — the one path that can hand a machine its assigned role or unattended install.

# bootstrap.env (mode 600, outside any repo):
#   BOOTSTRAP_TOKEN=<random, 32+ chars — same value as the Worker secret>
#   BOOTSTRAP_ALLOWED_MACS=aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:01,aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:02
#   BOOTSTRAP_CLIENT_CIDR=192.168.1.0/24
docker run -d --net=host --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \
  --env-file ./bootstrap.env \
  ghcr.io/fairchild/ipxe-bootstrap

The container fails closed without BOOTSTRAP_TOKEN and BOOTSTRAP_ALLOWED_MACS. Then reboot your target machine with network boot enabled in BIOS/UEFI. Full variable reference: fairchild/ipxe.

Option 2: iPXE Chain URL

If you already have iPXE or a DHCP/TFTP server, chain to:

chain https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot.ipxe

This reaches the public boot menu. Options 2 and 3 carry no bootstrap proof, so an assigned machine booted this way gets the menu, not its role — see how it works.

Option 3: ISO / USB Boot

Download a pre-configured iPXE ISO:

curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/ipxe.iso
# Write to USB: dd if=ipxe.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress

Experimental: sbnb Linux

sbnb Linux boots bare-metal GPUs into an AI-ready Linux that runs entirely in RAM. Auto-connects via Tailscale. Launch vLLM, SGLang, RAG, and Agents immediately.

sbnb requires UEFI firmware and a Tailscale auth key. See sbnb docs for details.

Download iPXE Binaries

# UEFI x86-64
curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/ipxe.efi

# UEFI ARM64
curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/ipxe-arm64.efi

# BIOS x86
curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/undionly.kpxe

# ISO (USB/CD)
curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/ipxe.iso

Verify Signatures

All binaries are signed with Ed25519. Verify with:

curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/signing-key.pub
curl -O https://ipxe.cloudcompute.com/boot/ipxe.efi.sig

openssl pkeyutl -verify -pubin \
  -inkey signing-key.pub -rawin \
  -in ipxe.efi -sigfile ipxe.efi.sig

Supported Hardware

x86 BIOS, x86-64 UEFI, and ARM64 UEFI systems. The boot menu auto-detects your architecture.

Guides

Raspberry Pi Network Boot — Boot a Pi over the network without an SD card.

UTM / Mac VM — Test network boot in a virtual machine on macOS.