Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a file transfer protocol, with the functionality of a very basic form of File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It was first defined in 1980 and it is used for operations like firmware upgrade on network devices. This post won’t be the history lesson :). To install tftp server on RH based distros, follow the next steps
Install tftp-server with
# yum install tftp-server xinetd |
Now you will need to set up some things before you can start and use tftp server
# nano /etc/xinetd.d/tftp |
service tftp
{
socket_type = dgram
protocol = udp
wait = yes
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
server_args = -s /var/lib/tftpboot
disable = no
per_source = 11
cps = 100 2
flags = IPv4
} |
To enable tftp server, set “disable” to no. Also, check server_args. In this case, all files will be/must be in /var/lib/tftpboot. If you have any problems with permissions, try to chmod 777 /var/lib/tftpboot and fix perms later.
Restart xinetd to apply settings you just made
# service xinetd restart |
Setting “disable” to yes will disable tftp server and for security reasons, you should disable tftp whenever you don’t need it.
TFTP has been implemented on top of the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) using port number 69. TFTP is designed to be small and easy to implement, therefore, lacks most of the features of a regular FTP. TFTP only reads and writes files (or mail) from/to a remote server. It cannot list directories, and currently has no provisions for user authentication.
In TFTP, any transfer begins with a request to read or write a file, which also serves to request a connection. If the server grants the request, the connection is opened and the file is sent in fixed length blocks of 512 bytes. Each data packet contains one block of data, and must be acknowledged by an acknowledgment packet before the next packet can be sent. A data packet of less than 512 bytes signals termination of a transfer. If a packet gets lost in the network, the intended recipient will timeout and may retransmit his last packet (which may be data or an acknowledgment), thus causing the sender of the lost packet to retransmit that lost packet. The sender has to keep just one packet on hand for retransmission, since the lock step acknowledgment guarantees that all older packets have been received. Notice that both machines involved in a transfer are considered senders and receivers. One sends data and receives acknowledgments, the other sends acknowledgments and receives data.