[U-Boot] Need FTP client support in U-Boot

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Madhu,

In message <23c3598d8b87452eb6a3d1f52afb8a34 at SG2PR01MB0394.apcprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com> you wrote:
> 
> We are looking for FTP client command in U-boot commands, So that, we
> can boot the O.S kernel-image through ftp-client(instead of tftpboot
> over network).

It would have been usful if you had told us whyyou thing the existing
network protocols (TFTP, NFS) are not sufficient for your use cases?

> Why doesn't the U-boot support FTP client ?

FTP is based on TCP/IP, but U-Boot implements just a very minimal set
of UDP based protocols.

> Can we implement/add the FTP client protocol code to U-boot sources
> and customize. if so, how much work activity involved in this ?
> 
> Is this just need to write a small ftp-client program file by using
> TCP stream sockets (as like in Linux) ? Or do we need to write up
> anything more like TCP/IP network stack..

Right, in the first step you would need to implement a full-blown
TCP/IP stack, which would most probably require some other deep-goig
changes (keep for example in mind that U-Boot is [intentionally]
strictly single-threaded; many implementations don't even support
interrupts).

The big question is: why should we do that?  U-Boot is a boot loader.
If you need OS functionality like a full-blown network stack, than
just boot an OS ...

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
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