[asterisk-users] OT - How to organize TFTP root directory ?

[Dave Fullerton]

Olivier wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Most (if not all) IP phones support provisioning through DHCP/TFTP.
> The trouble is some phones seem to require to store their config files in
> TFTP root directory.
> This makes this TFTP root directory a bit messy.
> 
> What are the best practices or tricks to manage this TFTP root directory ?
> 
> I was thinking of either :
> 
> 1. building a dedicated source TFTP tree in which files are cleanly
> organized (vendor/models:...) which would be synchronized (one way ? two
> ways ?) with the "official" TFTP tree (that would be then, collapsed to a
> single directory)
> 
> 2. tune DHCP/TFTP server config so that each phone would retrieve its config
> files from a vendor-dedicated subdirectory.
> 
> I don't have a clue about solution 2. Is it even possible ?
> Solution doesn't look very encouraging as it might be difficult to keep
> trees in sync.
> 

#2 might be possible, but there's a lot of "depends on" factors.

The ISC dhcpd often packaged in linux distributions has the ability to 
specify different dhcp options to different "pools" of addresses. You 
can then assign clients to pools based on a substring match of their mac 
address. This then requires that the client (phone) will use the URL 
specified in dhcp option 66. With all this put together you can assign 
each brand of phone to its own pool/options where the options point it 
to a URL containing the firmware for that brand of phone.

I do this with my polycom phones and it works well. Don't know if it 
works with other brands of phones.

-Dave