Netbooting Raspberry Pi

This material is work-in-progress ...

Consult Official Reference pages for Pi 3B, 3B+, 2B v1.2, 4, 5 for updated information.
(Last edited by Prabuanand on 10 May 2025.)

The Raspberry Pi 4 bootloader can be configured to boot from the network. Configure the bootloader with at least

BOOT_ORDER=0xf142 TFTP_PREFIX=1

and optionally also

TFTP_IP=x.x.x.x

where x.x.x.x is the IP address of your TFTP server.

If not configuring TFTP_IP in the bootloader, you'll need to configure your DHCP server to advertise the TFTP server IP address. This varies depending on your DHCP server; use the following details if applicable:

Vendor class: PXEClient:Arch:00000:UNDI:002001
Filename: /

The minimal set of files that your TFTP server needs to host are:

bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb (from raspberrypi/firmware/master/boot/bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb)
cmdline.txt (see below)
config.txt (see below)
fixup4.dat (from raspberrypi/firmware/master/boot/fixup4.dat, alternatively fixup4cd.dat for the cut down version)
initramfs-rpi4 (from alpine/edge/releases/aarch64/netboot/initramfs-rpi4)
start4.elf (from raspberrypi/firmware/master/boot/start4.elf, alternatively start4cd.elf for the cut down version)
vmlinuz-rpi4 (from alpine/edge/releases/aarch64/netboot/vmlinuz-rpi4)

The config files can be as follows

Contents of config.txt

[pi4]
kernel=vmlinuz-rpi4
initramfs initramfs-rpi4
arm_64bit=1

Contents of cmdline.txt

modules=loop,squashfs console=ttyAMA0,115200 ip=dhcp alpine_repo=http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main modloop=http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/releases/aarch64/netboot/modloop-rpi4

Instead of using the http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/releases/aarch64/netboot/ base URL above, pinning to a specific point in time is preferred. Raspberry Pi 4 netboot files are available from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/releases/aarch64/netboot-20230329/ onward.

With the above configured the Raspberry Pi 4 should be able to boot from the network without an SD card.

See also