[LinuxBIOS] remote reset

[ron minnich]

On 2/26/07, Segher Boessenkool <segher at kernel.crashing.org> wrote:

> If your (server-class) machine has a networked IPMI BMC
> then you can do remote reset with it just as well if the
> machine runs LinuxBIOS as it would with the vendor BIOS.
> Well it *should* work, who knows :-)


yep, it certainly ought to work, ...
It will fail if:
1) IPMI cpu shares an ethernet port with the main system
2) remote controller has timed out the ARP entry for the system you
are trying to reset

because the IPMI CPU does not respond to ARP.

So, the IPMI CPU -- which controls power and reset -- depends on the
host CPU -- the one running Linux, which may be hung -- to operate.
Unbelievable.

You're much better off depending on a watchdog timer than IPMI. IPMI
has not worked out. From reading the standard, I would have to guess
the folks who wrote it are not really OS people -- but I'm guessing.

ron