asterisk users - Oct 2009 - OT - How to organize TFTP root directory ?

Hi,

Most (if not all) IP phones support provisioning through DHCP/TFTP.
The trouble is some phones seem to require to store their config files in
TFTP root directory.
This makes this TFTP root directory a bit messy.

What are the best practices or tricks to manage this TFTP root directory ?

I was thinking of either :

1. building a dedicated source TFTP tree in which files are cleanly
organized (vendor/models:...) which would be synchronized (one way ? two
ways ?) with the "official" TFTP tree (that would be then, collapsed
to a
single directory)

2. tune DHCP/TFTP server config so that each phone would retrieve its config
files from a vendor-dedicated subdirectory.

I don't have a clue about solution 2. Is it even possible ?
Solution doesn't look very encouraging as it might be difficult to keep
trees in sync.

Suggestions ?

Regards
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Olivier wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Most (if not all) IP phones support provisioning through DHCP/TFTP.
> The trouble is some phones seem to require to store their config files in
> TFTP root directory.
> This makes this TFTP root directory a bit messy.
> 
> What are the best practices or tricks to manage this TFTP root directory ?
> 
> I was thinking of either :
> 
> 1. building a dedicated source TFTP tree in which files are cleanly
> organized (vendor/models:...) which would be synchronized (one way ? two
> ways ?) with the "official" TFTP tree (that would be then,
collapsed to a
> single directory)
> 
> 2. tune DHCP/TFTP server config so that each phone would retrieve its
config
> files from a vendor-dedicated subdirectory.
> 
> I don't have a clue about solution 2. Is it even possible ?
> Solution doesn't look very encouraging as it might be difficult to keep
> trees in sync.
> 
#2 might be possible, but there's a lot of "depends on" factors.

The ISC dhcpd often packaged in linux distributions has the ability to 
specify different dhcp options to different "pools" of addresses. You 
can then assign clients to pools based on a substring match of their mac 
address. This then requires that the client (phone) will use the URL 
specified in dhcp option 66. With all this put together you can assign 
each brand of phone to its own pool/options where the options point it 
to a URL containing the firmware for that brand of phone.

I do this with my polycom phones and it works well. Don't know if it 
works with other brands of phones.

-Dave

Olivier <oza-4h07 at myamail.com> writes:
> Most (if not all) IP phones support provisioning through DHCP/TFTP.
> The trouble is some phones seem to require to store their config files in
> TFTP root directory.
A lot of IP phones support HTTP instead of TFTP. This helps, because it
is fairly easy to write a script which dynamically generates the
configuration.

Someone really ought to write a TFTP daemon with the same feature... Or
a TFTP plugin for apache perhaps.


/Benny

> Great idea !
> I didn't know it could be possible to run several instances of xinetd,
each
> binded to a specific IP address.
> Is this specific to xinetd or does openbsd-inetd also support this feature
?
> Anyway, I'll check this in openbsd-inetd doc myself and (hopefully)
report
> my findings here.
xinetd will let you do multiple bindings of a single port, with a
single instance of xinetd running.

You would define two service entries in the config file, with the
same service name, different ids (e.g. "tftp1" and "tftp2"),
and different "bind" addresses (one for each interface).  Each
service entry would then run a different server program, or the
same server program with different server_args.

As far as I know, standard BSD (and Linux) inetd doesn't have
this capability.

On Sat, 24 Oct 2009, Dave Platt wrote:
> xinetd will let you do multiple bindings of a single port, with a single 
> instance of xinetd running.
>
> You would define two service entries in the config file, with the same 
> service name, different ids (e.g. "tftp1" and "tftp2"),
and different
> "bind" addresses (one for each interface).  Each service entry
would
> then run a different server program, or the same server program with 
> different server_args.
How about tftp-cisco and tftp-polycom?

You can also name the Ethernet interfaces to match:

 	sudo ifconfig eth0:cisco w.x.y.z up

Might as well make it obvious for the next guy.

A good work-around, but I still like the idea of adding an "execute 
configuration tool" feature to atftpd.

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
Newline                                              Fax: +1-760-731-3000