Boot IP-STB with TFTP

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.

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 out information to the IP-STBs on which TFTP server to use and what to download. The IP-STB receives this information, connects to the TFTP server, 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.

1. Prepare the TFTP server

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

2. Update DHCP configuration

   To enable IP-STBs 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 STB's
   group {
     # TFTP server
     next-server 192.168.1.73;
   
     # STB shall boot with TFTP method
     option Kreatel.kernel-protocol "2";
   
     # Increase loading speed
     option Kreatel.tftp-blocksize 25000;
   
     # file path and name (relative to TFTP server root)
     option Kreatel.tftp-kernel-filename "/boot-1903.bin";
   
     host 19X3 {
       hardware ethernet 00:02:9B:42:62:21;
       fixed-address 192.168.5.78;
     }
   }
   

   Remember to restart DHCP server. For example, as root, type:

   service dhcpd restart

3. Copy bootimage

   Copy your bootimage to the TFTP directory.

   cp bootimage.bin /tftpboot/boot-1903

4. Boot your IP-STB

   Power on you IP-STB and it should download the image fromthe TFTP server and boot it.

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 bootloader_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