IPMI support in Linux

[Andrew Ip]

Does anyone know if IPMI works under LinuxBIOS?  AFAIK, there is a Linux
driver patch but dunno if it still works under LinuxBIOS.

-Andrew

[Ronald G Minnich]

I can try the patch. There is no reason it would not work as IPMI is more
or less a device driver on the boards we've seen.

ron

Andrew Ip  writes:
> Does anyone know if IPMI works under LinuxBIOS?  AFAIK, there is a Linux
>
> driver patch but dunno if it still works under LinuxBIOS.

Which part of IPMI.

IPMI is a weird spec where all of the parts seem optional 
that I have not seen on a stable production board.  There is the
L440gx but I would not call that stable.

I have do not have good feelings about intel delivering hardware where 
accessing the i2c bus with any noise locks of the i2c controller.  Not
planning to fix it, and then planning to have extra hardware
monitoring your system state via i2c.  I do not see how
you can build a stable system that way.

The fact that there is some semi-standard and people are starting
adopt it is good.  It means things like temperature monitoring etc
should get easier.  But only if people actually implement something
sane.  I have trouble seeing designs with an onboard microcontroller
as sane.

Eric

[Ronald G Minnich]

On 19 Oct 2002, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> I have trouble seeing designs with an onboard microcontroller as sane.

Agree 100%. That's what we keep telling vendors too.

The worst thing I've seen lately is a board with 2 K8s, and a PPC running
hardhat Linux for maintenance. That's just nuts.

ron

[Dale Harris]

On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 05:45:47PM +0000, Eric W. Biederman elucidated:
> Which part of IPMI.
>
> IPMI is a weird spec where all of the parts seem optional 
> that I have not seen on a stable production board.  There is the
> L440gx but I would not call that stable.

So how do things look today?  W.r.t IPMI and LinuxBIOS?  Has much of
anything changed?  Is there anything in IPMI that I would need?  LLNL
has their powerman utilty which apparently only uses LinuxBIOS:

http://www.llnl.gov/linux/powerman/

Heard that Tyan has a board 2721 that supports LinuxBIOS?  Anybody know
about that board?

[Jim Garlick]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Dale Harris wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 05:45:47PM +0000, Eric W. Biederman elucidated:
> > Which part of IPMI.
> >
> > IPMI is a weird spec where all of the parts seem optional
> > that I have not seen on a stable production board.  There is the
> > L440gx but I would not call that stable.
>
> So how do things look today?  W.r.t IPMI and LinuxBIOS?  Has much of
> anything changed?  Is there anything in IPMI that I would need?  LLNL
> has their powerman utilty which apparently only uses LinuxBIOS:
>
> http://www.llnl.gov/linux/powerman/
>
> Heard that Tyan has a board 2721 that supports LinuxBIOS?  Anybody know
> about that board?

Dale, not sure exactly what you're after here, but powerman has no connection
with LinuxBIOS or IPMI.  It manages external remote power control devices
(power strips with ethernet connections).

Jim

[Dale Harris]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 03:38:09PM -0800, Jim Garlick elucidated:
> Dale, not sure exactly what you're after here, but powerman has no connection
> with LinuxBIOS or IPMI.  It manages external remote power control devices
> (power strips with ethernet connections).
>
> Jim

Hi Jim,

Well, I'm probably just being stupid, to put it frankly.  Basically I
was wondering what power on/off functionality LinuxBIOS has, or if it
can use IPMI.  There have been updated drivers added the kernel in the
pass couple of months for IPMI, I assume that could be used by LinuxBIOS
to access that functionality on those boards that support IPMI.  I was
mainly curious if anyone had been doing any development in those areas.
My disconnect on powerman was just my failure to RTFM.  Sorry, for any
confusion.  ;-)

Dale