Remote Debian Boot via Netboot.xyz, iSCSI, and ZFS

The article describes a step‑by‑step setup for booting Debian 13 from a network drive using Netboot.xyz, iSCSI, and ZFS on a Debian‑based server. The author first installs required packages (apache2, git, ansible, tftpd‑hpa, targetcli‑fb) and clones the Netboot.xyz repo, then customizes user_overrides.yml to generate menus, disks, and checksums while disabling local vars. Custom iPXE scripts (debian13‑iscsi.ipxe and custom.ipxe) are created to point to the iSCSI target and the Debian installer assets, which are downloaded into /var/www/html/assets/debian13. The TFTP server is configured at /srv/tftp/ipxe with the Netboot.xyz binaries, and DNSMasq on an Asus router is set up to serve PXE/ iPXE boot files for BIOS, UEFI, and iPXE clients. A ZFS pool “tank” is created with a 32 GB ZVOL “tank/debian‑disk‑12700k” that is exported as an iSCSI target (iqn.2026‑05.xyz.716697.pve‑vt:tank‑debian‑disk‑12700k) with authentication and write‑protect enabled. The author then uses Ansible to deploy Netboot.xyz, configures TFTP, and verifies the iSCSI setup via targetcli. Finally, the Debian installer boots over the network, allowing installation on multiple machines without local storage. This configuration demonstrates a fully remote, network‑bootable environment that can be reused for other OS deployments.