If system requirements allow for it, adding in a simple zeroconf ip address assignment would seem to be ideal in a lot of situations. All you need to do is a hash on a mac, some arp broadcasts, and you up :) www.zeroconf.org . There also is some service discovery stuff but I've not looked to deeply at that aspect of it. Linux has a patch for it, microsoft and apple have been using it for a while. Next time you see a 169.x.x.x address you know where it came from. :)
-----Original Message----- From: Brian S. Park [mailto:brian@corelis.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 4:20 PM To: Wolfgang Denk Cc: 'u-boot-users@lists.sourceforge.net'; Wells, Charles Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] uploading OS over network instead of u-boot do wnloading it from a server.
Dear Wolfgang,
The advantage I see is this.
- You ship 1 less piece of software. Less number of application
that
needs
to be installed/started is always better, IMHO, when it comes to support.
Don't you have to ship a (proprietary?) upload client instead of the (standard) TFTP server?
It could be integrated to our PC side application which can upload it the first time it connects to the target. Integrating TFTP server to our application would require it to start before the user powering up the target.
- It makes the network configuration a bit simpler. If
you do not
have a dedicated TFTP server, you must use serial console
to setup
the server IP before you can boot if you change the tftp server. Users only have to
worry
about 1 IP instead of 2 when setting up our product. Since large number of our users are not very network savvy, things like this make a difference when it comes to support.
As mentioned before, the TFTP server which is used for
example by
Abatron does not require any special setup on the host.
In any case you will have to setup both the network
interfaces on the
host and the target.
With TFTP client approach, I need to set the serverip environmental variable to IP of PC with the TFTP server. If I move the controller to another room, and found out that the PC with TFTP server is not powered up, I need to either change the serverip variable to the new PC I intended to use or go back to the other room and power up the PC. :)
I think it's easiest for the user and the developer if the firmware is entirely stored on the flash. If we can upload the OS, we can make it work as if the firmware is on the target (i.e. hide TFTP stuff from the user).
I have no idea how complicated it will be to implement server feature.
It is not complicated. But IMHO not worth the effort.
I always appreciate your comments and opinion.
Thank you.
Brian
=============================================================== Brian S. Park brian@corelis.com (562) 926-6727 x143
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