So you've just received a brand-new secondhand one of these things off Ebay, what do we need to do to it before use?

BIOS/UEFI settings

Getting in there

• Mash something during POST to get the one-time boot target menu, you can access the BIOS/UEFI from there

• If you get stuck in Windows because the keyboard wasn't detected fast enough, you can get to the desktop and then:
  • Hit the Windows key, type "UEFI", then select Change Advanced Start-up Options
  • Restart Now with the Advanced Startup button

  • Then from that boot menu go to Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, UEFI Firmware Settings, Restart

Update the BIOS to the latest version

• TBC
• The latest BIOS update for the M710q (as of 2023-11-20) is version XYZ, released 2019-xx-xx

Grab the MAC address

You need to boot the OS for this I think, or inspect the DHCP server the first time it PXE boots.

You'll need this later when configuring PXE booting.

Change BIOS/UEFI settings

The first thing you want to do is set it to full UEFI mode, no legacy here.

Then all these settings:

• TBC

Prepare for PXE booting

1. Choose an IP address, the DHCP server will be used to configure the server when it comes up
2. Choose a name, and go assign the name to address mapping in the DNS zone
3. Configure the DHCP server with the static address reservation

   • In Mikrotik Winbox it's in IP -> DHCP Server -> Leases. You can open an existing static lease and Copy it. Make sure to edit the:

     • IP
     • Name
     • MAC address
     • Comment

   • In Mikrotik CLI it'd be something like this

     [furinkan@helian] /ip/dhcp-server/lease> add address=192.168.1.256 mac-address=02-99-88-77-66-55 server="dhcp general" comment=persica42

   • If using dnsmasq in Pihole we add a custom config file like /etc/dnsmasq.d/02-pihole-dhcp-persica-cluster.conf

     dhcp-host=02:99:88:77:66:55,set:persica,192.168.1.256,persica42,5m
     # one dhcp-host line per host
     dhcp-boot=tag:persica,grub/grubx64.efi,illustrious.thighhighs.top,192.168.1.12

     Note that things are a bit different here, we specify boot options per-host rather than at a subnet level like on Mikrotik

     • Run pihole restartdns after making changes

You should now be able to PXE boot the box. It'll get an address from DHCP, then hit the next-server for PXE executable which is grubx64.efi

Grub will download its menu from the TFTP server via baked-in path, which defines the kernel and initrd to download and execute. That's typically a Linux kernel, with cmdline options to start a kickstarted install. Kickstart will download its kickstart.cfg then the magic happens.

Now go put the right bits in the right places, you'll need a kernel and initrd at a minimum, then for auto installs you need a kickstart config (or Debian equivalent): PxeBooting#Putting_the_right_bits_in_the_right_places