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I use tftp in a daily basis, as part of my work. So far, so good, since yesterday (Jun 21, 2016) it simply did not worked anymore. I do not know exactly the reasons, because could not find any support neither people discussing this problem (is it because no one else uses tftp like me to flash routers using Apple?).

The basic procedure I always did to start the tftpd:

$ launchctl load -F /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist
$ launchctl start com.apple.tftpd

Then I put my firmwares under the "/private/tftpboot" directory, which was already setup to mode 0777.

In order to download the firmwares, the process is simple:

$ tftp
tftp> connect
(to) localhost
tftp> get firmware.bin
Transfer timed out.

As you might guess the "Transfer timed out" does not means a good thing for me.

Taking a look at "/var/log/system.log" with tail I could see the following messages in loop (seriously, it was a huge messages volume and my SSD HD almost burned because this high intensive I/O when log writing):

...
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro tftpd[57553]: setgid to -2: Operation not permitted
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.tftpd[57553]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro tftpd[57554]: setgid to -2: Operation not permitted
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.tftpd[57554]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro tftpd[57555]: setgid to -2: Operation not permitted
Jun 22 14:36:59 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.tftpd[57555]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
...

Since it was a non-stopping service, cause an intensive I/O, I had to stop it and this is the usual procedure I always did:

$ launchctl stop com.apple.tftpd
$ launchctl unload -F /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist

I need this tool because I work on that. Could you please evaluate what is happening? Maybe some OS update that brought this faulty behavior to tftpd?

Neither Docker container running a tftpd bound to UDP/69 was able to work. I even erased all my disk contents and tried to do a completely fresh OS X install, thinking that some sort of buggy update caused some mess into my system.

Notes:

  1. Already tried it with System Integrity Protection (rootless) disabled:

  2. Already tried to run the launchctl startup procedures (as described above) with "sudo".

  3. I duplicated this question from Ask Different and Server Fault in order to get more opinions.

Thank you, Best Regards.

Community
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herrera
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2 Answers2

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This problem has plagued me too. The answer is simple... there is no file in the directory/private/tftpboot as apple has not included it as a standard anymore. Apple expects people to purchase OS x Server software to get that added feature back, I'm assuming.

Jack Myers
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  • I was not aware on this! Hope they fix it someday and stop acting like this. Why would one purchase OS X Server under this conditions? I would definitely not. – herrera Aug 18 '16 at 12:22
  • OSX server software is free for 2 years now. – bioffe Oct 01 '16 at 18:24
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Just to close this question, since I found no way to use tftpd as I did in the past in my daily basis, using Mac OS X, then I decided to solve it my on way and created a simple project which is based on Vagrant, VirtualBox and Docker that solved my all my needs:

https://github.com/rpherrera/docker-tftpd

herrera
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