NAME

       tftpd — DARPA Trivial File Transfer Protocol server

SYNOPSIS

       tftpd [-n] [-s] [directory ...]

DESCRIPTION

       Tftpd  is  a server which supports the DARPA Trivial File Transfer Protocol.  The TFTP server operates at
       the port indicated in the ‘tftp’ service description; see services(5).  The server is normally started by
       inetd(8).

       The use of tftp(1) does not require an account or password on the remote system.   Due  to  the  lack  of
       authentication  information,  tftpd will allow only publicly readable files to be accessed.  Files may be
       written only if they already exist and are publicly writable.  Note that  this  extends  the  concept  of
       “public”  to  include  all  users  on  all hosts that can be reached through the network; this may not be
       appropriate on all systems, and its implications should be considered before enabling tftp service.   The
       server should have the user ID with the lowest possible privilege.

       Access  to files may be controlled by invoking tftpd with a list of directories by including pathnames as
       server program arguments in /etc/inetd.conf.  In this case access is restricted to files whose names  are
       prefixed  by  the  one of the given directories. If no directories are supplied the default is /tftpboot.
       To give out access to the whole filesystem, should this be desired  for  some  reason,  supply  /  as  an
       argument.

       Unfortunately,  on  multi-homed  systems,  it is impossible for tftpd to determine the address on which a
       packet was received. As a result, tftpd uses two different mechanisms to guess the best source address to
       use for replies. If the socket that inetd(8) passed to tftpd is bound to a particular address, tftpd uses
       that address for replies. Otherwise, tftpd uses ``UDP connect''  to  let  the  kernel  choose  the  reply
       address  based on the destination of the replies and the routing tables. This means that most setups will
       work transparently, while in cases where the reply address must be fixed, the virtual hosting feature  of
       inetd(8)  can  be  used to ensure that replies go out from the correct address.  These considerations are
       important, because most tftp clients will reject reply packets that appear to  come  from  an  unexpected
       address.

       The options are:

       -n      Suppresses negative acknowledgement of requests for nonexistent relative filenames.

       -s      All  absolute  filenames are treated as if they were preceded by the first directory argument, or
               /tftpboot if there is none.

SEE ALSO

       tftp(1), inetd(8)

HISTORY

       The tftpd command appeared in 4.2BSD.

Linux NetKit (0.17)                               July 29, 2000                                         TFTPD(8)