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

[Mythri, Madhukar (Artesyn)]

>>
>> 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 ...

Hi Wolfgang,

Thanks for the response.
Our motivation is to boot the OS over the network using FTP ( because it is going to be more secure with login/passwd credentials,
before file-transfer), instead of TFTP.  Hence we are exploring the option of FTP client in U-Boot..
If not, we are looking for any "Authenticated" file transfer over network in existing U_boot.

Thanks,
Madhu