PXE configuration for dnsmasq #194

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pboy merged 4 commits from goroboro/user-documentation:dnsmasq-pxe into main

2026-07-15 20:52:31 +00:00

goroboro commented

2026-07-06 15:40:32 +00:00

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This PR provides validated steps to configure dnsmasq as a tftp server and to provide UEFI dhcp-boot instructions to load network-based grub EFI binaries.

The commit excludes instructions for legacy BIOS clients partly because I was unable to get this to work properly in my lab environment and couldn't validate the steps, but also because legacy BIOS is very old now and there isn't a hard requirement to continue to document this at this point. We can add instructions for BIOS in the future, if required.

I have folded this information into the dnsmasq.adoc file to keep information about dnsmasq consolidated. Previous attempts in other branches have tended to try to put this information into a separate file. I felt that this was more coherent and fit well into the existing documentation.

I intend to submit future PRs to further describe network based installation in a broader context and that PR will probably reference this dnsmasq documentation for more information on configuring a simple PXE-boot install service.

Due to some of the quirks of my libvirt based lab, and while attempting to resolve issues with legacy BIOS, I used some AI assistance, and some of this might have influenced some of the content in this commit. All steps have been manually tested and documented, but since AI was used to resolve some issues along the way, I have added two AI attribution tags to this commit.

Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
Assisted-by: Qwen-3.6-35B-A3B on llama.cpp

This PR provides validated steps to configure dnsmasq as a tftp server and to provide UEFI dhcp-boot instructions to load network-based grub EFI binaries. The commit excludes instructions for legacy BIOS clients partly because I was unable to get this to work properly in my lab environment and couldn't validate the steps, but also because legacy BIOS is very old now and there isn't a hard requirement to continue to document this at this point. We can add instructions for BIOS in the future, if required. I have folded this information into the dnsmasq.adoc file to keep information about dnsmasq consolidated. Previous attempts in other branches have tended to try to put this information into a separate file. I felt that this was more coherent and fit well into the existing documentation. I intend to submit future PRs to further describe network based installation in a broader context and that PR will probably reference this dnsmasq documentation for more information on configuring a simple PXE-boot install service. Due to some of the quirks of my libvirt based lab, and while attempting to resolve issues with legacy BIOS, I used some AI assistance, and some of this might have influenced some of the content in this commit. All steps have been manually tested and documented, but since AI was used to resolve some issues along the way, I have added two AI attribution tags to this commit. Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com> Assisted-by: Qwen-3.6-35B-A3B on llama.cpp

goroboro force-pushed dnsmasq-pxe from 8d1c9ab822 to 0bd8ea413d

2026-07-15 16:02:18 +00:00

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