How do I install and run a TFTP server?

I have an embedded VxWorks target that needs to boot its kernel from my Ubuntu computer. How do I install and run a TFTP server?

3 Answers

TFTP Server Install and Setup

Install following packages.
```
sudo apt-get install xinetd tftpd tftp
```

Create /etc/xinetd.d/tftp and put this entry

service tftp
{
protocol = udp
port = 69
socket_type = dgram
wait = yes
user = nobody
server = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
server_args = /tftpboot
disable = no
}

Create a folder /tftpboot this should match whatever you gave in server_args. mostly it will be tftpboot
```
sudo mkdir /tftpboot
sudo chmod -R 777 /tftpboot
sudo chown -R nobody /tftpboot
```

Restart the xinetd service.

newer systems:

sudo service xinetd restart

older systems:

sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Now our tftp server is up and running.

Testing our tftp server

Create a file named test with some content in /tftpboot path of the tftp server
Obtain the ip address of the tftp server using ifconfig command

Now in some other system follow the following steps.

tftp 192.168.1.2
tftp> get test
Sent 159 bytes in 0.0 seconds
tftp> quit
cat test

Source:

You can install atftpd and it will create a directory called /tftpboot in which you may place your files. Put especially the pxelinux.0 file there. Any future configuration will be addressed if it is necessary.

When you install the package with

sudo apt-get install atftpd

it will use Debconf to prompt you for some choices. You can set many choices(server timeout may be useful), especially the basepath. You can also adjust the multicast range.

You can install tftpd-hpa and change the configurations . Steps for installing tftpd-hpa is explained in this blog post.