Longtime listner (circa 2018), first time booster, You asked about PXE booted servers. For 3 years now I'm running my NAS diskless. Which sounds strange NASes need disks. This is what I mean, there is no disk or partition used for an OS. It is based on Alpine Linux (NetBoot). The state is stored in a tar file, which is generated by the command `lbu`. This tar file is stored on a webserver. During boot it does: fetching pxe related boot configuration, fetching kernel via tftp, booting kernel, during kernel boot it fetches the mod-loop via http (kernel modules) and finally fetches the tar file with server configuration. Then it downloads the required packages and starts everything. This also means that the NAS is stateless. If it doesn't respond as expected, reboot and it is back in a working state. PS, the upgrades are automated via ansible playbooks.

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AmazingQ
Apr 21, 2026

1,000 via Fountain The 99.8% Rescue | LINUX Unplugged 663 All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows

Longtime listner (circa 2018), first time booster, You asked about PXE booted servers. For 3 years now I'm running my NAS diskless. Which sounds strange NASes need disks. This is what I mean, there is no disk or partition used for an OS. It is based on Alpine Linux (NetBoot). The state is stored in a tar file, which is generated by the command `lbu`. This tar file is stored on a webserver. During boot it does: fetching pxe related boot configuration, fetching kernel via tftp, booting kernel, during kernel boot it fetches the mod-loop via http (kernel modules) and finally fetches the tar file with server configuration. Then it downloads the required packages and starts everything. This also means that the NAS is stateless. If it doesn't respond as expected, reboot and it is back in a working state. PS, the upgrades are automated via ansible playbooks.