"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">

<refentry id='tftpd8'>

<refmeta>

  <refentrytitle>TFTPD</refentrytitle>

  <manvolnum>8</manvolnum>

  <refmiscinfo class='manual'>iputils</refmiscinfo>

</refmeta>

<refnamediv>

  <refname>tftpd</refname>

  <refpurpose>Trivial File Transfer Protocol server</refpurpose>

</refnamediv>

<refsynopsisdiv id='synopsis'>

  <cmdsynopsis>

    <command>tftpd</command>

    <arg choice='plain'><replaceable>directory</replaceable></arg>

    <sbr/>

</cmdsynopsis>

</refsynopsisdiv>

<refsect1 id='description'>

  <title>DESCRIPTION</title>

  <para><command>tftpd</command> is a server which supports the DARPA

Trivial File Transfer Protocol (RFC1350).

The TFTP server is started by

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>inetd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para>

<para><emphasis remap='I'>directory</emphasis> is required argument; if it is not given

<command>tftpd</command> aborts. This path is prepended to any file name requested

via TFTP protocol, effectively chrooting <command>tftpd</command> to this directory.

File names are validated not to escape out of this directory, however

administrator may configure such escape using symbolic links.</para>

<para>It is in difference of variants of <command>tftpd</command> usually distributed

with unix-like systems, which take a list of directories and match

file names to start from one of given prefixes or to some random

default, when no arguments were given. There are two reasons not to

behave in this way: first, it is inconvenient, clients are not expected

to know something about layout of filesystem on server host.

And second, TFTP protocol is not a tool for browsing of server's filesystem,

it is just an agent allowing to boot dumb clients.</para>

<para>In the case when <command>tftpd</command> is used together with

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>rarpd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,

tftp directories in these services should coincide and it is expected

that each client booted via TFTP has boot image corresponding

its IP address with an architecture suffix following Sun Microsystems

conventions. See

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>rarpd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>

for more details.</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1 id='security'>

  <title>SECURITY</title>

  <para>TFTP protocol does not provide any authentication.

Due to this capital flaw <command>tftpd</command> is not able to restrict

access to files and will allow only publically readable

files to be accessed. Files may be written only if they already

exist and are publically writable.</para>

<para>Impact is evident, directory exported via TFTP <emphasis remap='B'>must not</emphasis>

contain sensitive information of any kind, everyone is allowed

to read it as soon as a client is allowed. Boot images do not contain

such information as rule, however you should think twice before

publishing f.e. Cisco IOS config files via TFTP, they contain

<emphasis remap='B'>unencrypted</emphasis> passwords and may contain some information

about the network, which you were not going to make public.</para>

<para>The <command>tftpd</command> server should be executed by <emphasis remap='B'>inetd</emphasis>

with dropped root privileges, namely with a user ID giving minimal

access to files published in tftp directory. If it is executed

as superuser occasionally, <command>tftpd</command> drops its UID and GID

to 65534, which is most likely not the thing which you expect.

However, this is not very essential; remember, only files accessible

for everyone can be read or written via TFTP.</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1 id='see_also'>

  <title>SEE ALSO</title>

  <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>rarpd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>tftp</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>inetd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1 id='history'>

  <title>HISTORY</title>

  <para>The <command>tftpd</command> command appeared in 4.2BSD. The source in iputils

is cleaned up both syntactically (ANSIized) and semantically (UDP socket IO).</para>

<para>It is distributed with iputils mostly as good demo of an interesting feature

(MSG_CONFIRM) allowing to boot long images by dumb clients

not answering ARP requests until they are finally booted.

However, this is full functional and can be used in production.</para>

</refsect1>

<refsect1 id='availability'>

  <title>AVAILABILITY</title>

  <para><command>tftpd</command> is part of <emphasis remap='I'>iputils</emphasis> package.</para>

</refsect1>

</refentry>