[U-Boot] [U-Boot-Users] TFTP server support in U-boot

[Jerry Van Baren]

Ben Warren wrote:
> Hello Santosh,
> 
> santosh pattar wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> As of now in the U-boot only TFTP client is supported. I am planning
>> to have TFTP server support in the u-boot. Can you please help me in
>> this regarding?
>>
>> Please provide me few links if this has been done already, or links
>> from where i can take some information and start working on it.
>>
>>   
> I believe this has come up before, so search the mail archives.  I don't 
> remember anybody posting a patch, though.  In general, U-boot doesn't 
> 'serve', so you have quite a bit of work to do.  Luckily, TFTP is one of 
> the more trivial protocols, hence the name.

Do search the archives because my memory isn't what it used to be, but I 
don't recall a TFTP server coming up.  Periodically FTP support comes up 
and then silently disappears when the requester figures out how much 
work it would be.  Despite sharing 3/4 of the characters and supporting 
the same concept, TFTP and FTP are totally different animals.

> I'm curious why you want to do this.  People generally use U-boot as 
> transient software for loading operating systems that are much more 
> suitable for serving images.  Do you have a situation where you have 
> several identical devices and want to reduce the upstream network load?  
> In that case, you may want to look into the multicast TFTP instead.
> 
> regards,
> Ben

If you really need this, I would suggest adding a simple (modal) "tftp 
server" command so that, when you execute the command all u-boot is 
doing is TFTP server work until something indicates "done" (e.g. a file 
was successfully transfered) and then the command exits.  This would fit 
well into the u-boot restricted architecture that is characterized by 
being single threaded with no tasking.

Trying to do a full fledged tftp server that runs independently in the 
background is going to be a lot harder because there is no "background" 
in u-boot.

Best regards,
gvb