Is there a better way to quickly check for the presence of a server?
Yes.
Actually trying TFTP seems to take even longer.
No, if you configure it correctly.
OK - I see your comments and understand them.
But there's a difference between "is the server there" and "please TFTP from it - and the timeouts for one are not the same as the timeout for another.
If the server is present, I'm happy to use relaxed timeouts for the actual transfer.
But I'd like a quicker way of just checking whether I'm on the "production test network" or in a user site in the field.
So I'm still in favour of a separate time-out for ping.
David
Would it be a good enhancement to u-boot to have an environment variable which changes the ping timeout when it exists?
Ping is not really useful. It may tell you that some machine is up and running, but it will not tell you if there is any TFTP service running on it. If you want to test for TFTP, then test for TFTP and not for something unrelated.
See envrionment variable "netretry" (README) and variables TftpRRQTimeoutMSecs and TftpRRQTimeoutCountMax (net/tftp.c and common/update.c) for tuning TFTP connection behaviour and timeouts.
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@denx.de The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. - E. W. Dijkstra
David Collier
www.dexdyne.com