Setting Up a TFTP Server on CentOS 7 for Raspberry Pi Network Booting

When it comes to network booting multiple Raspberry Pis, using an SD-card is no longer necessary. With a properly configured TFTP server, you can simply run the final two lines (flash the reconfigured bootloader and retrieve information) to get started. These commands will be required later on, so make sure to write them down.

The first step is to obtain general information about the Pi, including its serial number and MAC address. This can be achieved using the `rpi-eeprom-config` command with the `-out` option, which saves the configuration to a file named `bootconf.txt`.

In this setup, we will use the 10.0.0.0/24 IP address range, with the CentOS machine at 10.0.0.1. To separate our test-gear from the general network, the CentOS machine is equipped with two network interfaces - one (enp0s3) exclusively used to communicate with internal networks connecting to the test-gear.

These instructions are specifically designed for CentOS and deal with its firewall and required SELinux settings. In addition to Jonathan Bennett's articles on Hackaday, I also found several helpful comments below them that contributed to these instructions.

It is essential to note that the following instructions are tailored to work exclusively with the Raspberry Pi 4 and a machine running CentOS 7. If you're using a different distribution, some of these steps may not be necessary or might require modifications.

By following these steps, you'll be able to set up a TFTP server on your CentOS 7 machine and successfully network boot multiple Raspberry Pis.

Centos 7 tftp server