[nsp] Booting from FTP

[Lars Erik Gullerud]

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 09:57, Srdjan Simic wrote:

>    It starts, boots bootstrap and then when it initiates interfaces, it looks at the ftp server whether there is an correct image (it transfers around 24kB with RETR command). Then it waits for 3 (three) minutes, after that sends abort and retries to retr image and it does all the way. So, normal operation of the router will continue, but booting lasts for around 5 minutes. Is there a way to speed things up?

The same behaviour can be observed when just FTP'ing images to the
router (not while booting), e.g. "copy ftp slot0:". However - the long
wait-time seems to be dependant on what ftp-daemon is being used. To me
it seems to be a problem with how the Cisco boxes send the ABOR command,
possibly timing issue, or a problem in several FTP-daemons. At least
this command is received garbled by some FTP daemons when the router
issues it.

While testing this a while back, I observed that on a proftpd server
(running on FreeBSD), the router got this timeout - and the ABOR command
appears to be received with first character missing, i.e. the server is
receiving BOR, which is obviously not understood. However, when changing
the FTP daemon to the standard FreeBSD ftpd (on the same box), the
command seems to be received correctly, and the router starts the copy
with no wait-period after it does the first RETR to it starts the actual
transfer. 

So, in other words - you might want to try out various FTP daemons if
you want to reduce your boottime. The only one I know for certain that
works with zero problems, is the standard FreeBSD ftpd, which is we are
now using.

/leg