Situation of tftpd-hpa

[Stéphane Graber]

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Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Stéphane Graber <stgraber at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> Recently, tftpd-hpa got synced with Debian. We used to carry the 0.x
>> serie in the past and since Lucid we now have 5.x.
>>
>>  tftpd-hpa |     0.49-1 |        karmic | amd64, i386
>>  tftpd-hpa |     5.0-11 |         lucid | amd64, i386
>>
>> That sync made quite a lot of changes in the way tftpd-hpa behaves:
>>  - Instead of using /var/lib/tftpboot, it now uses /srv/tftp
>>  - The path is prompted with a priority HIGH debconf question
>>  - Instead of using inetd by default, it now runs as a daemon.
>>
>> All these changes affect LTSP quite a lot as we are quite used to having
>> everything handled by inetd (openbsd-inetd) and have our scripts write
>> in /var/lib/tftpboot/ and not /srv/tftp.
>> That priority high question also means that anyone installing LTSP at
>> the moment has to confirm or change the TFTP path.
>>
>> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/518815
>>
>> I'm not sure I understand why all the changed in Debian, especially as
>> it's very likely to break a lot of scripts and confuse a lot of users.
>>
>> I would be interested to hear if someone has a good reason to want that
>> quite important change happen in Lucid with all the work potentially
>> involved to update LTSP and other scripts using tftpd-hpa or if we
>> should rather restore the previous behavior and wait for Lucid+1 to
>> change it.
>>
>> As far as LTSP is concerned, I guess I can quite easily fix the issue by:
>>  - Updating ltsp.seed to preseed that debconf question
>>  - Update the code to use /srv/tftp
>>  - Make sure we don't update the inetd record
> 
> Hi Stephane-
> 
> I also use tftpd-hpa to serve netboot images for many UEC
> installations while developing and testing.
> 
> I lost about a half-day last week as I upgraded my tftp/pxe server
> from Karmic to Lucid, and tftpd-hpa completely broke my setup.  I was
> broken by both the /srv/tftp change, as well as the inetd record
> change.
> 
> In my opinion, we should leave /var/lib/tftpboot as the default source
> path, and that debconf question should be medium.  And a bit more work
> needs to be done on the init/startup process, allowing for one of
> /etc/init.d startup, upstart startup, or inetd startup.
> 
> :-Dustin

Hey all,

As briefly discussed during today's Server team meeting, I have built
the same package as currently in Lucid with:
 - Debconf priority moved from high to low (as the others)
 - Default path set to /var/lib/tftpboot/ and not /srv/tftp/

It's available for testing in my PPA:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~stgraber/+archive/ppa/+packages

The diff itself is only affecting two lines from the original Debian
packaging so it'll be extremely easy to merge from Debian.

It's running as daemon and not using inetd anymore, that particular
change would have required a bigger delta and I don't think it's useful
as it's known to work fine in both modes and transition code is already
in Debian's packaging.


Unless someone complains or have a better solution to propose, I'll be
uploading that on Friday morning (EST).


Thanks

- --
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com
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