I'm trying to set up a tftp server using xinetd under Fedora. I believe I have everything installed/configured correctly: a correctly formatted tftp entry (file) in /etc/xinetd.d, an entry for my client in /etc/hosts.allow (in.tftpd: <client IP>), a tftp user that runs /sbin/nologin with home dir of /tftpboot, a /tftpboot directory with correct ownership and permissions, I've restarted xinetd okay, so on and so forth. I can also see the connection attempts in the file /var/log/xinetd, but I only get a START, FAIL and EXIT for each attempted read request. The client eventually timesout after several retries.

So, I'm thinking something is killing the connections, or that there is some piece of configuration info I've over looked. I don't think the firewall is killing it as I see portentry messages ignoring port 69 UDP in /var/log/messages, plus I've configured the security level to trust UDP port 69 and TCP port 69. I've tried adding an arp entry specifically for my client which didn't help.

I'm out of ideas - can anyone help?
- Todd

Hi,

I don't know how to solve your problem, but I can assure you that it's not a firewall issue, since if iptbales dropped the incomming tftp packets you wouldn't have log entries in /var/log/xinetd.
Note : tftp only uses udp 69, not tcp 69 (so you can drop this rule)

Chris,

I've been having the same problem. I've turned off iptables and firewall just to make sure they where not interfering. I also added the "-c" in front of the in.tftpd argument (-c should alow creation of files). I've noticed in my log wher user root can not acquire groups for nobody. I had changed the tftpboot dir to nobody:nobody.

At whits end here Ideas anyone? I do have RH9 at home working but hey!!

Thanks,

Wayne Knight

I set up the tftp server on another machine - it's running Lineox - and get the same problem.

In either case I can connect to the server, but I don't get reponses to write or read requests. And for some unknown reason the server running on Lineox refuses to write to the log file despite being configured to do so.

'bout ready to punt.

-Todd

Upon further research of this tftp problem I discovered that FC3 is ONLY listening for a diskless workstation boot request. There is surely a way to get tftp to work but I've wasted enough time trying to discover how.

I ended up going back to Redhat 9 and all is well. Everything works like it is supposed to. No wondered the Redhat site calls Fedora the Bleeding edge of technology.

Wayne