# poseidon/matchbox

Network boot and provision Fedora CoreOS and Flatcar Linux clusters

Repository: https://github.com/poseidon/matchbox
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/matchbox
Homepage: https://matchbox.psdn.io/
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: bare-metal, pxe, fedora-coreos, flatcar-linux, protobuf
Last push: 2026-08-26T06:22:37+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3915, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1424, forks 290 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:41.392859+00:00)

## What it is
Matchbox is a Go service that matches bare-metal machines to provisioning profiles via PXE/iPXE network boot, serving kernel, initrd, iPXE, and Ignition configs based on hardware labels like MAC or UUID. It exposes authenticated gRPC and HTTP APIs and integrates with Terraform to declaratively provision Fedora CoreOS and Flatcar Linux clusters.

## Use cases
- pxe boot bare metal servers into fedora coreos
- provision flatcar linux clusters on bare metal
- network boot machines by mac address
- automate bare metal provisioning with terraform
- set up pxe boot environment for coreos
- install coreos to disk over the network
- test ignition provisioning locally with qemu
- manage bare metal kubernetes cluster provisioning

## When to choose
- provisioning physical or virtual bare-metal machines into Fedora CoreOS or Flatcar Linux
- you want declarative, Terraform-driven network boot provisioning
- you need label-based machine matching (MAC/UUID) with iPXE chainloading
- running a self-hosted PXE provisioning service on Linux, Docker, or Kubernetes

## When to avoid
- provisioning cloud VMs or non-container-Linux distros (use cloud-init or vendor tooling)
- you need a general-purpose DHCP/TFTP server rather than a provisioning matcher
- Windows or non-Ignition-based operating systems

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: deployment, configuration-management, infrastructure-as-code, api-framework, sdk
- domain: infrastructure-as-code, self-hosted, cloud-computing
- platform: go, self-hosted, cli
- tags: pxe-boot, bare-metal-provisioning, ignition, ipxe, fedora-coreos, flatcar-linux, network-boot, terraform-provider, grpc-api, cluster-provisioning, devops, containers, linux, docker, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- poseidon/matchbox (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:41.392859+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:37:36.344171+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/poseidon/matchbox (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:41.392859+00:00, sha d6e051e24262)
  - homepage: https://matchbox.psdn.io/ (fetched 2026-08-29T11:49:36.874523+00:00, sha 605cf0f17655)
  - site_page: https://matchbox.psdn.io/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T11:49:36.877198+00:00, sha e1de0a361c8e)
  - site_page: https://matchbox.psdn.io/getting-started-docker (fetched 2026-08-29T11:49:36.879328+00:00, sha 6ad718423075)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.