[LinuxBIOS] remote reset

[Segher Boessenkool]

>> 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

That is supposed to work actually, using a VLAN and a
direct connection between BMC and NIC.

> 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.

For remote management you typically use MAC addresses, not
IPv4, so it *should* work.  It's all bloody fragile though.

> 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.

Well certainly not open source OS people ;-)

</rant>


Segher