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andyortlieb
Asked: 2011-06-25 12:31:13 +0800 CST

Generate TFTP Content on the fly?

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I know this isn't the purpose of TFTP, but I'm working in an environment where a lot of different types of devices pull provisioning info from a TFTP server. What I'm developing is a provisioning system that tracks and maintains device configurations, and I would like to have the requested files generated on the fly, much like you could do with any web application.

Yes some of these devices can support HTTP for provisioning, but not all of them do, and we want things to be consistent.

Are there any TFTP daemons that can provide something analogous to CGI?

cgi provisioning tftp

3 Answers

  1. This is addressed here. Sadly, it seems to be difficult or impossible, given the constraints on the TFTP protocol.

    > Hi.
    >
    > Has there ever been any consideration to allowing the tftp server to
    > provide dynamic content?
    >

    Yes. The protocol makes it difficult.

    You pretty much have to guarantee that the contents is generated in a fraction of a second, or your client will most likely flood your server.

    The problem is that in order to be able to answer a tsize query you have to know the full size of the output. However, since TFTP isn't guaranteed to distinguish between an RRQ resend and a new request (pxelinux will make the distinction, but it's hard for the TFTP server to make use of it), so you have to have a reply before the first request.

    I have a proposal for a TFTP "pause" option and opcode, but I would have to (a) implement it, and (b) write it up as an RFC, (c) figure out how to get it through IETF, which like to pretend TFTP doesn't exist.

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  2. A better design would be to generate all config files and cache them in the tftpboot directory rather than trying to generate them on the fly. Ideally the filename your devices request would be unique or identifiable and you could pre-generate files based on that.

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  3. Best Answer

    A quick search revealed this tftpd-cgi project on Sourceforge - might be worth checking out.

    I also just wrote a simple tftpd server capable of serving CGI, available on Github, so it's definitely possible. I haven't tested with any PXE clients yet, but it does work with my operating system's tftp client.

    My test usage:

    ./tftpd-cgi.py &

echo 'get cgi/test' | tftp 127.0.0.1; cat test && rm test

    Which outputs from my simple CGI script:

    Hello from CGI land!
127.0.0.1:61796
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