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

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

[santosh pattar]

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.

Hope to get some advice on this soon from you.

Thanks,
Santosh

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

[Ben Warren]

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.

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

[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

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

[santosh pattar]

Dear Ben,

Thank you very much for the suggestion. Actually i could able to get
the TFTP server up in u-boot. This Server wont run in the background
all the time. The senario is like this, Board comes up and checks for
validation of the image on the flash. If the validation fails it
switches to the server mode that is its in the listening mode. If any
read/write (RRQ/WRQ) requests come to the board, it services them and
as you suggested if complete/done command(file) comes it switches from
server mode and continues with the regular operation.

Now i am able to service Read and write operations which come from
TFTP client(PC based) .But this needs still lot of testing and
validation. Can we make this as part of u-boot main line release?
please let me know your views.

And if you say yes , we can make this as part of u-boot main line
release then i would need help from your side in finding out the
different test cases to test this fully.

Thank you very much for your suggestion.

Regards,
santosh


On 12/16/08, Jerry Van Baren <gerald.vanbaren@ge.com> wrote:
> 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
>

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

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear "santosh pattar",

In message <19f3dfd10812162008q27069e30uec230196911ba3f3@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> 
> Thank you very much for the suggestion. Actually i could able to get
> the TFTP server up in u-boot. This Server wont run in the background
> all the time. The senario is like this, Board comes up and checks for
> validation of the image on the flash. If the validation fails it
> switches to the server mode that is its in the listening mode. If any
> read/write (RRQ/WRQ) requests come to the board, it services them and
> as you suggested if complete/done command(file) comes it switches from
> server mode and continues with the regular operation.

And why exactly cannot this be done using normal TFTP client mode that
everybody else uses?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
If something is different, it's either better or worse,  and  usually
both.                                                    - Larry Wall

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

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Santosh,

In message <19f3dfd10812170156l211f73fft61d1ad25f5724775@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> 
> We want to have server on the board so that it does what
> we(Application running in different place/system) wants it to do.We
> dont want the board to initiate the transfer.Always the application
> running on different system which controls this board should initiate
> the transfer.We can say that some other system is controlling  this
> board, so board does not have privilege to initiate any transfer.

Umm... but you don't have to change anything to acchieve this. That's
already what we have now. U-Boot never does anythingonit's own  -  it
only  performs the commands you give it. If you do not send a command
to U-Boot to perform a TFTP download it will not  do  anything  -  it
will just wait for your commands.

> So in this kind of systems we may have TFTP server in u-boot.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. You are  wasting  your  efforts
here. If you want to be able to control U-Boot remotely, then just do
it  -  either obver the serial console interface, or using netconsole
over Ethernet. This is actually much more flexible than the  solution
you  have  in  mind  -  and  you don;t have to spendany efforts on it
because it's all already available.

> Please let me know if this is clear.

It is clear to me, but I think it's based on  a  misunderstanding  on
your side of how U-Boot works.

> On 12/17/08, Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de> wrote:
> > Dear "santosh pattar",
> >
> > In message <19f3dfd10812162008q27069e30uec230196911ba3f3@mail.gmail.com> you
> > wrote:
...

Please do not top-post / full quote!!!

Read http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html , please.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.       - Kronecker

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

[Ben Warren]

Hi Santosh,

santosh pattar wrote:
> Dear Ben,
>
> Thank you very much for the suggestion. Actually i could able to get
> the TFTP server up in u-boot. This Server wont run in the background
> all the time. The senario is like this, Board comes up and checks for
> validation of the image on the flash. If the validation fails it
> switches to the server mode that is its in the listening mode. If any
> read/write (RRQ/WRQ) requests come to the board, it services them and
> as you suggested if complete/done command(file) comes it switches from
> server mode and continues with the regular operation.
>
> Now i am able to service Read and write operations which come from
> TFTP client(PC based) .But this needs still lot of testing and
> validation. Can we make this as part of u-boot main line release?
> please let me know your views.
>
>   
I'm not yet convinced of the utility of a TFTP server, though.  Lots of 
people validate the flash version and pull an image via TFTP if needed, 
but are able to do it using the TFTP client.  It looks like you're 
downloading code to your board, using a 'put' operation from the Windows 
client, right?  If the problem is that you don't have a TFTP server on 
your PC, there are plenty of free Windows TFTP servers out there.  
Google can help.

If, on the other hand, you can clearly explain why you need a server in 
U-boot, of course we'll listen and will accept patches that meet all of 
the standard criteria.
> And if you say yes , we can make this as part of u-boot main line
> release then i would need help from your side in finding out the
> different test cases to test this fully.
>
> Thank you very much for your suggestion.
>
> Regards,
> santosh
>
>   
regards,
Ben