Configuring the BOOTP Daemon

Some boards use the BOOTP bootstrap protocol to obtain boot and configuration information such as an IP address for the board from a server (generally your host system) running a BOOTP daemon.

If you do not have the BOOTP software, you might find it easier to use DHCP, which includes the BOOTP functionality.

BOOTP uses the configuration file /etc/bootptab to specify this information for each entity, like the target board, that requires it. The configuration information is stored in the /etc/bootptab file and indexed by the MAC address of the hardware. For a development board, this is the MAC address of the board’s Ethernet hardware.

The BOOTP daemon, bootpd uses the configuration file /etc/bootptab to provide boot configuration information based on the MAC address of Ethernet hardware on a board. In order to boot the target using BOOTP, you must create an entry in the /etc/bootptab based on the MAC address of the board. This entry will look like the following:

<bsp_name>:ha=00804d460000:ht=ethernet:ip=10.0.0.10:sa=10.0.0.2:\
       :rp=<rfs_dir>:

Each entry consists of colon-separated fields that provide the following information:

<bsp_name>

<bsp_name> is a label or name identifying the entry.

ha=<value>

The hardware (MAC) address of the embedded development board’s Ethernet interface.

ht=ethernet

Identifies the type of networking hardware as Ethernet.

ip=<ww.xx.yy.zz>

The IP address you assign to the board.

sa=<ww.xx.yy.zz>

The IP address of the server that is hosting the NFS root filesystem for the board.

rp=<path>

The <path> is the absolute path of the root filesystem for this board as exported by NFS.

After creating the /etc/bootptab entry for the target board, you must start the BOOTP daemon manually (in most cases) by executing the command /usr/sbin/bootpd.

For more information about BOOTP, see Internet RFC 951, available at the web site http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc951.html.