Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 4B Using pfsense & TrueNAS

pfsense Setup

1. Create/Edit DHCP Static Mapping for the Raspberry Pi 4B that you want to add.

2. Make sure to add your TrueNAS TFTP Server IP Address. When the Raspberry Pi asks for it's IP from pfsense, pfsense will direct the Raspberry Pi to the TFTP server.

TrueNAS Setup

1. Setup the Pool to be used to hold the NFS Boot shares.

2. Setup the Pool to be used to hold the NFS Root shares.

3. Setup the NFS Boot shares making sure to add your authorised network/hosts as required.

4. Setup the NFS Root shares making sure to add your authorised network/hosts as required.

5. Setup the TFTP Service pointing to the Boot pool.

6. Make sure to run the TFTP server and set it to start automatically

Raspberry Pi Setup

Placeholders

- [serial] = Raspberry Pi serial number
- [ip] = TrueNAS IP address
- [path] = NFS share path e.g. `/mnt/pool/`
- [hostname] = Raspberry Pi hostname
- [space] = Make sure there is a space here

1. Update Pi (Optional)

   sudo apt update

   sudo apt dist-upgrade

2. Setup a specific Raspberry Pi hostname (Optional)

   sudo nano /etc/hostname

   sudo nano /etc/hosts

3. Reboot

   sudo reboot

4. Create NFS Boot Share

   Create local folder for NFS boot share

   sudo mkdir -p /nfs/rpi-tftpboot

   Mount NFS boot share to local folder

   sudo mount -t nfs -O rw,all_squash,anonuid=1001,anongid=1001[space][ip]:[path]/rpi-tftpboot /nfs/rpi-tftpboot/

   Get Raspberry Pi serial number

   vcgencmd otp_dump | grep 28: | sed s/.*://g

   Create Raspberry Pi serial number folder on NFS share

   sudo mkdir /nfs/rpi-tftpboot/[serial]

   Copy boot partition files to NFS share

   sudo cp -r /boot/* /nfs/rpi-tftpboot/[serial]

   Edit cmdline.text on NFS boot share to point to the NFS root share

   sudo nano /nfs/rpi-tftpboot/[serial]/cmdline.txt

   Replace contents with the following

   console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=[ip]:[path]/[hostname],vers=3 rw ip=dhcp elevator=deadline rootwait

5. Create NFS Root Share

   Create local folder for NFS root share

   sudo mkdir -p /nfs/root

   Mount NFS root share to local folder

   sudo mount -t nfs -O rw,all_squash,anonuid=1001,anongid=1001[space][ip]:[path]/[hostname] /nfs/root

   Rsync Raspberry Pi root to NFS root share

   sudo rsync -xa --progress --exclude /nfs / /nfs/[hostname]

   Edit fstab on NFS root share to mount the NFS boot share

   sudo nano /nfs/rpi-pxe/pibox/etc/fstab

   Replace local mounts with NFS boot share mount

   [ip] : [path] /rpi-tftpboot/[serial][space]/boot nfs defaults,vers=3,proto=tcp 0 0

6. Setup the Raspberry Pi to boot from the network

   Start the Raspberry Pi configuration tool

   sudo raspi-config

   • Select 6 Advanced Options
   • Select A6 Boot Order
   • Select B3 Network Boot
   • Select OK
   • Select Reboot

   Once the Raspberry Pi has rebooted, shut down the Raspberry Pi

   sudo shutdown now

   Remove the SD card and power cycle the Raspberry Pi

   • If all is good the Raspberry Pi should boot from the network
   • After booting I would recommend going over the boot log using journalctl -b to see if there is anything on your Pi that's going to have an issue with running from an NFS share.