a tftp error

[omal]

Hi

Can someone help me to understand the following error message that I'm getting in my 2500 series router, please?

%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/ciscortr.cfg (Timed out)

I'm getting this at a fixed interval like.

Therefore once I entered the following commands in another router that I was getting the above error message. After I entered the below mentioned command, the error message stopped coming, but now when I type "copy run tftp" I am asked the IP address of the tftp server. Then I give the IP address, then it shows me (.) instead of (!) signs and gives me a smiliar error like I wrote above.

The command that I typed when I was initially getting the error was:

R1(config)#no tftp-server nvram:

R1(config)#no tftp-server system:

Do you think that this has an effect as to why I can't save my configuration to the tftp server now or something else is the problem?

Thanks in advance!

[Richard Burts]

Omal

I think that there are several parts in answering your question. First about the original error message:

%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/ciscortr.cfg (Timed out)

this is because the router is sending a broadcast message to find a tftp server to find a config file. It is happening because there is a command in the config:

service config

if you go into config mode and enter no service config then this error will stop. Anything else that you do is treating symptoms instead of treating the underlying problem.

Next the commands that you entered:

R1(config)#no tftp-server nvram:

R1(config)#no tftp-server system:

are instructing the router that it should not act as a tftp server (which it probably is not anyway). I do not have much experience with the tftp-server nvram and do not think that it would cause your problem. But it would be worth trying to configure tftp-server nvram and see if the symptoms improve.

I believe that there are several things that might cause the problem with copying the config to the tftp server. First I would be sure that you are typing the address correctly. Second I would verify that there is good connectivity to the server by doing a traceroute from the router to the server.

If you do have good connectivity to the server then we can look to some other factors. Has copying the config to the server worked from this particular router before? In some implementations of tftp the file must exist in the server directory before you can write to it. In some servers you must have write access privileges to copy the config. Could either of these be issues in your situation?

HTH

Rick