RE: [Etherboot-developers] Re: Patch for TFTP-multicast released

[Timothy L. <tl...@ro...>]

> Your referents are a bit unclear: What current implementation do you
> mean?  Anselm's? Which standard tftp code do you mean? The one in
> Etherboot, and not the tftpd?

Now that you mention it, it was unclear.  Yes, I was referring to
Anselm's current multicast tftp code in proto_mftm.c.  I think my
changes bring it closer to supporting taftp (and the RFC if atftp
implements it correctly) however it needs some work particularly around
error handling.

However, its seems to me that the only real difference that RFC 2090
means for tftp is the way a file is requested and the servers
acknowledgment to the client.  I may be way off base here (especially
since I have not even looked at how Etherboot currently communicates
with a now-multicast server), but I think if multicast tftp is compiled
in we should (with minor changes to etherboot's standard tftp process):

1) Request the file in multicast mode.
2) The server will either respond in multicast, display an error or not
reply (I think)
3) If the server responds in multicast, the EB simply acknowledges the
server's response as normal
4) If the server responds with an error or does not respond, EB would re
transmit the request in unicast mode.

I could be wrong, but it seems fairly doable and could allow people to
take advantage of multicast with very little effort.  Set up the atftp
server and burn new roms (well maybe a little effort).  It would be able
to use the standard dhcpd.conf settings no changes would be required
there.

Just a thought

Tim

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