This sounds kind of weird to say, but my little Mikrotik hAP Lite VPN tunnel is just too slow to boot ISOs to OOB on my servers. I tried this a few months ago or something with those two SuperMicro servers that live in the rack and are doing nothing, and I could never get Ubuntu to boot past the part where it first turns purple and shows a logo.

Fast forward and I’m working on a different server (the twin r610 to the server that is currently running) and it’s the same exact thing; won’t ever get past that part of the boot.

I try Debian because it has a lightweight network-based installer, and it actually gets to the install part, but for whatever reason the network is not functioning on it as it should. I spent a considerable amount of time entering network info but it just wouldn’t do it. I gave up for a time and went back to doing other stuff.

Later on I figured out that I could probably prop up a quick VM on that other server with pfSense or something, enable DHCP, and just let that server get a lease and do it that way. In doing that I could theoretically complete the network install then SSH from my existing server to that one to perform the actual external network config.

Sometimes you just have to marinate on a problem for a bit to find a solution!