I've been using "Diskless install using PXE from the LiveCD" (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Installation_alternatives#Diskless_install_using_PXE_from_the_LiveCD) to boot the minimal installation CD via PXE with great success for quite a while, but the recent versions of the CD (anything created in 2025) don't seem to work. The boot process gets stuck in various steps depending on which hardware the machine has, such as initializing the disk interface or the network interface. The problem is reproducible in QEMU and VirtualBox, as well as physical machines, even though booting straight from the .ISO file works fine in all cases. It does work fine with 20240714 build, so something must have changed between then and now.
Same problem here, with 20240623 everything worked, with 20241229, 20250119, 20250309 the squashfs is not loaded. The gentoo.igz of 20250309 was created with this parameters: Version: dracut-103 Arguments: --xz --no-hostonly -a 'dmsquash-live' -a 'mdraid' -o 'btrfs' -o 'crypt' -o 'i18n' -o 'usrmount' -o 'lunmask' -o 'qemu' -o 'qemu-net' -o 'nvdimm' -o 'multipath' -I 'busybox' --force --kernel-image '/usr/src/linux-6.12.16/unsupported ARCH=' --kver '6.12.16' --include '/lib/keymaps' '/lib/keymaps' When looking at the working one (20240623), I get this information: Version: Genkernel 4.3.14 (2024-06-23 18:08:51 UTC) Arguments: --boot-font=none --keymap --compress-initramfs --no-microcode-initramfs --ramdisk-modules --busybox --no-bcache --no-b2sum --no-btrfs --no-iscsi --no-multipath --no-dmraid --no-mdadm --no-lvm --no-unionfs --no-zfs --no-splash --no-plymouth --no-strace --no-keyctl --no-gpg --no-luks --no-firmware --firmware-dir=/lib/firmware --no-ssh --no-e2fsprogs --no-xfsprogs So apparently a switch was made from genkernel to dracut. Looking at the documentation, I would expect the "-a 'squash'" parameter is missing.
Can try changing the boot arguments to the following please and let us know if it correct the issue: initrd=/gentoo.igz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc loop=/image.squashfs looptype=squashfs cdroot You may need to change the initrd= part to match where you are storing gentoo.igz (the initramfs.)
gentoo.igz does not contain the image.squashfs, if you use it instead of the self-generated network.igz, the image.squashfs is not available to be used as loop. Already tried your boot arguments, but with the network.igz instead. Problem is that it cannot find the root device, /dev/ram0 never appears.
Gentoo Handbook now states that genkernel is deprecated (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Kernel#Deprecated:_Genkernel), so that might be the reason for the installation CD to switch to dracut. Anyhow, I'm relieved the issue doesn't seem to be unique to my settings, but I'll have to leave the matter to the experts. In the mean time, please share any workaround I should experiment and report back.
