Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!tcp-ip From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip Subject: Re: tftp for bootstrap Message-ID: <8722@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Wed, 3-Jul-85 02:13:04 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8722 Posted: Wed Jul 3 02:13:04 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Jul-85 00:17:24 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 20 From: "J. Noel Chiappa"MIT has used TFTP to boot diskless gateways for about 5 years now. It works quite well. We really like TFTP since it is a standard IP protocol and machines usually come with server TFTP implementations. We handle the 'punctuation characters' problem by using a file name that consists of the IP address with all the fields three characters long; thus, a gateway at 18.10.0.11 would boot from a file named '018010000011'. (Actually, we use octal because we are wierd, but you get the idea). In general, we use built in configuration information, kept in some non-volatile storage. While you can avoid this on an Ethernet with broadcast, this method does not work on non-broadcast nets. In general, the spirit of IP is that the 'base solution' to any problem should work on a non-broadcast net with no gateways. We thus feel that having some small non-volatile store for information such as which directories to look in on which hosts is reasonable. Noel -------