HowTo Guides

This section contains tutorials that will guide you through performing a variety of network booting tasks for the first time. You'll need to download and build gPXE before trying most of them.

How to deploy gPXE

There are three typical deployment scenarios for gPXE.

Some boot ROMs

How to boot from a web server

gPXE can boot from a web server just as easily as from a TFTP server. Web servers typically scale better than TFTP servers, and don't suffer from the file size limitations and other problems that plague TFTP booting.

How to boot using a gPXE script

gPXE has a minimal scripting language. Any command that you can type at the gPXE command prompt can be included into a script file.

How to boot from SAN

Boot from SAN is the process of booting from a remote disk, using a protocol such as iSCSI or AoE. It can be used to boot operating systems that do not generally support network booting, such as Windows Server 2003, Windows XP or Windows Vista.

How to boot over a wireless network

gPXE has basic support for a few types of 802.11 wireless cards, and can boot over wireless networks including those protected by WEP or WPA Personal encryption.

How to boot Windows PE

Windows PE is the installer for Vista and later versions of Windows. It can be started from the network using gPXE.

How to use advanced DHCP options

There are several DHCP options that can be used to control advanced features of gPXE. Instructions are available for

How to debug gPXE

  • debug Debug/Record gPXE messages over serial cable
  • gdbstub Debugging with gdb

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