Boot IP-STB with TFTP

Note! Booting with TFTP should ONLY be used in a development environment.
We strongly discourage use of this boot method in deployment because of the load on the TFTP server.

Boot IP-STB with boot image through TFTP

TFTP, or Trivial File Transfer Protocol, provides a quick alternative to booting your IP-STB from an Infocast Server. A DHCP server is required, which sends our information to the IP-STBs. The IP-STB receives this information, connects to the TFTP server, and downloads the specified file and then boots using it. In contrast to Infocast, which can handle a practically unlimited number of booting STB's, the TFTP server experiences a load for each booting box, and is therefore not suitable outside of a lab environment.

TFTP server

1. Configure a location where you want to put your bootimages Example: /tftpboot/
2. Make sure your TFTP server is running. This is a common linux service and is well documented on the Internet

Update DHCP configuration

To enable IP-STB:s to boot through TFTP you need to send some parameters, namely the TFTP server address, the file to download, and the kernel-protocol which tells the IP-STB to use TFTP boot instead of Infocast or Flash memory. Update the DHCP configuration as follows. See DHCP options for further reference on the settings.

  
    # 19xx series of boxes
    group {
      next-server 192.168.1.73;                              # TFTP server
      option Kreatel.kernel-protocol "2";                    # Use TFTP
      option Kreatel.tftp-blocksize 25000;                   # Improve loading speed
      option Kreatel.tftp-kernel-filename "/boot-1903.bin";  # file path and name (relative to TFTP server root)
      host 19X3 {
        hardware ethernet 00:02:9B:42:62:21;
        fixed-address 192.168.5.78;
      }
    }
  

Remember to restart DHCP server.Example: service dhcpd restart

Copy bootimage

Copy your bootimage to the TFTP directory. Example: cp bootimage.bin /tftpboot/boot-1903

Boot your IP-STB

Power on you IP-STB and you should have it load the bootimage through TFTP.

Common problems

If your IP-STB is not booting as expected, you can check the following things:

• Verify that the TFTP server is actually running
• Verify that the DHCP server settings are correct, and the DHCP server was restarted

• Verify the kernel-protocol is set to "2" in the DHCP configuration
• Use the firmware_log_client.py script to verify that the IP-STB is requesting the file you specified in the DHCP configuration
• Verify that that file exists in the right place on the TFTP server