Boot prompt for Intel AMT

[Jack Vogel]

On 3/5/07, Artem Kuchin <matrix at itlegion.ru> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I hope some people will understand what  i am talking about, because
> the technology, i think, is not very popular, but can come VERY handy.
>
> Intel AMT Serial over LAN (SOL, why is it called 'over LAN' if it is really
> 'OVER IP'?) allows to boot into BIOS of a remote machine
> and even, as seen in their demo, can be used to control MS DOS prompt.

well because it isnt using IP, besides SOIP is uninspiring :)

> However, i tried it and did not see any boot prompt over SOL connection.
> As i understand it does not use bios for input/output and therefore data is
> not sent/received over SOL connection. Thisis a pitty because of boot prompt
> would work over SOL then remote source upgrade would be much plainless
> and less risky than now. For example, i could just book old kernel if something
> goes wrong.
>
> Is there a way to make boot prompt work over SOL?
>
> The othe question, is there such technology for Supermicro mainboards?

It doesnt work the way you think it works, its not just some serial port
that spits ASCII characters, rather I believe it requires you to speak
IPMI to it.

Of course, if you happen to have an IBM Bladecenter, then it does just
look like a serial port on the blade, but you still have to deal with the
management controller stuff on the incoming side.

After you deal with all this stuff for a while you will LONG for the good
old days of a simple UART :)

Cheers,

Jack