On 2010-08-23, Detlev Zundel dzu@denx.de wrote:
I didn't say that. I was trying to say that our bareboard system doesn't support Ethernet and does not have TCP/IP stack (like Linux). If our system was a Linux system, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
We use tftp in U-Boot exactly because we also do not have a TCP/IP stack :)
tftp needs only udp is thus "not too complex" to implement on bare ethernet.
Doesn't "our bareboard system doesn't support Ethernet" preclude the use of Ethernet (UDP or otherwise)?
Yes, sorry. I was mislead by the "and not the more efficient FTP used in Linux". The pure mentioning of FTP which does not make any sense without a network port made me read the following statement not close enough.
I thought maybe I had lost track of who posted what. :)
Maybe you can implement a server on your hardware?
What sort of server?
It would be a tftp server of course but that is out of the question without a network hardware.
Now that you mention it, I have implemented a tftp server for U-Boot.
We needed a way to recover "bricked" units in the field, and there's simply no way we could require out customers to install a tftp server on their machines. Making U-Boot the tftp server and our "restore" program the client solved several problems. I also find have U-Boot be the server is a lot more convenient for development use. [It also U-Boot commands to be sent via the tftp protocol.]
I thought about submitting patches (it's pretty much a stand-alone addition except for 3-4 lines in net.[ch]). But it was made abundantly clear that tftp server code for U-Boot would never be considered -- I was scolded for even asking about it.