[Freeipmi-devel] bmc-config & ipmi 2.0 problem

[Albert Chu]

Looking for suggestions/recommendations:

Background:

In ipmi 1.5, the max password length is 16 bytes.  In ipmi 2.0,
passwords can be set to a max of 16 bytes or 20 bytes. Internally in the
firmware, passwords are padded up to the max and a flag indicates if the
max is 16 bytes or 20 bytes.

If the max is 20 bytes, only ipmi 2.0 can be used to establish an ipmi
session.  If the max is 16 bytes, ipmi 1.5 or ipmi 2.0 can be used to
establish an ipmi session.

Problem:

Assuming the user is on an IPMI 2.0 machine, if the user inputs a
password < 16 bytes to bmc-config, how should the user indicate which
max password length should be configured?

A) A new flag "Max_Password_Length" in the config file indicates if the
max password length is 16 or 20 bytes.  
   - Resulting issue: bmc-config assumes each config file line has a
configurable option.  Now two lines in the config file equal one
configurable value.  Bmc-config would probably need to be re-architected
to handle this.

B) Configuration options 'Password16' or 'Password20' will be used. 
   - Resulting issue: Both can't be output to the user, the user will
simply have to know that one or the other can be used.


Al

--
Albert Chu
address@hidden
925-422-5311
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory