pTFTPd - A pure-Python TFTP tool suite
pTFTPd is a collection of tools related to TFTP. It includes a TFTP server, a TFTP client, and a complete PXE solution based on this TFTP server and a micro-DHCP or BOOTP server. All these tools are written in Python and designed to be fast, RFC compliant and easy to use.
Available tools include:
bootpd
: a BOOTP server (RFC951 and RFC1497 compliant)dhcpd
: a simple, stripped-down DHCP server.ptftpd
: the TFTP server (RFC1350, 2347, 2348, 2349 and 7440 compliant)pxed
: a one-call PXE server using dhcpd and ptftpd.ptftp
: a simple TFTP client (RFC1350, 2347, 2348, 2349 and 7440 compliant and capable)
They all support the --help
option to present the usage summary to
the user.
All tools also understand the --rfc1350
option, which forces them in
basic TFTP RFC1350 compliance mode, disabling all TFTP extensions for
increased compatibility would you encouter any problem with your target
system.
Installation
pTFTPd is available on PyPI as the ptftpd
distribution.
$ pip install ptftpd
This will install the ptftplib
Python package, as well as the scripts
listed above.
If you use the pTFTPd tool suite outside of a standard distribution
installation, you may need to specify the Python module search path with
PYTHONPATH
before executing the binaries:
$ export PYTHONPATH=`pwd` $ bin/ptftp Connected to localhost:69. tftp>
TFTP server and client
The TFTP server, pTFTPd, fully supports the TFTP specification as defined in RFC1350. It also supports the TFTP Option Extension protocol (per RFC2347), the block size option as defined in RFC2348 and the transfer size option from RFC2349.
For help on how to use pTFTPd, type:
$ ptftpd --help
The port used can be changed using the -p
option. The root path is
given as a simple argument. For example, to serve /var/lib/tftp
on
port 6969 through the eth0 network interface:
$ ptftpd -p 6969 eth0 /var/lib/tftp
The TFTP client is an interactive client, just launch it and type
help
to see the available commands:
$ ptftp tftp> help ...
PXE solution
The PXE system is also very easy to use. It takes three arguments: the
network interface to listen on, the TFTP root path from which to serve
files, and the PXE boot filename. It will automatically start a TFTP
server and a DHCP server to serve hosts on the given interface. See
--help
for more details:
$ pxed --help
Mechanics for using pxed.py
with the BOOTP server are not yet in
place, but such a solution can easily be constructed manually by
starting the BOOTP server and the TFTP server manually:
$ bootpd <interface> <PXE boot file> & $ ptftpd <interface>