ipxe/ipxe

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2040 stars · 797 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

iPXE is the leading open source network boot firmware, providing a full PXE implementation enhanced with features like booting from HTTP/HTTPS, iSCSI, FCoE, and AoE SAN targets, plus scripting, menus, and forms. It can replace a network card's PXE ROM or be chainloaded from an existing PXE environment, and supports multiple architectures including x86, ARM, RISC-V, and s390x.

Use cases

• boot machines over the network via PXE
• boot an OS installer from an HTTP server instead of USB media
• boot diskless workstations from an iSCSI SAN
• chainload iPXE from an existing PXE ROM to get HTTP boot support
• automate provisioning with iPXE scripts and boot menus
• boot Windows PE or Linux installers via HTTP for mass deployment
• set up UEFI Secure Boot compatible network booting
• boot machines in cloud environments like EC2 or Google Cloud

When to choose

• you need to provision or install operating systems on many machines over the network
• your hardware's built-in PXE ROM lacks features like HTTP(S) boot or iSCSI
• you want scripted, menu-driven network boot workflows
• you need diskless booting from SAN targets (iSCSI, FCoE, AoE)
• you need network boot firmware across diverse CPU architectures

When to avoid

• you only need to boot from local disk with no network involvement
• you need a full OS or hypervisor rather than a boot firmware
• your network cards cannot chainload and you cannot reflash their ROMs
• you need a graphical end-user application rather than firmware

Facets

application · maturity active

networking security cli embedded developer-tools infrastructure-as-code self-hosted operating-systems networking cross-platform embedded pxe network-boot firmware uefi iscsi san-boot http-boot secure-boot chainloading diskless boot x86 arm

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ipxe/ipxe")