RE: [Freeipmi-users] FreeIPMI on OpenSolaris

[Lance Beazley]

Hi Al,

Thank you for the reply and yes now that I look a bit closer the output I was 
looking at from ipmi_locate were the "default" values for KCS. The actual 
attempt to find the KCS was the first line, which failed, and had already 
scrolled off screen when I was looking. Thank you for catching that as it 
brings my world back into balance.

So in general, unless others chime in, it looks like anyone using FreeIPMI with 
OpenSolaris has been grabbing an EED binary per the OS defect posted on OS.org 
and since the EED has only just recently ended no one has actually dealt with a 
more permanent fix.

I know that we have several utilities in our OpenSolaris environment that are 
currently doing memory mapped I/O successfully but they use some arcane OS 
calls to get proper access and map the memory into the utility's space.

I guess as a first step I will put a small utility together that uses those 
commands and attempts to write to the BMC addresses and see if that faults.

Lance

-----Original Message-----
From: Al Chu [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 1:50 PM
To: Lance Beazley
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Freeipmi-users] FreeIPMI on OpenSolaris

Hi Lance,

I'll have to defer a number of the below questions to other people since
I do almost all of my work on Linux.  But I'll answer what I recall.

> Also I see an implication in the documentation for FreeIPMI tools 
> that the kernel driver may not be needed and indeed the ipmi-locate 
> tool does locate the KCS interface of the BMC on my platforms but 
> none of the other tools play. Instead they all report similar errors 
> such as, "could not find inband device". Is the kernel mode BMC 
> driver necessary on OpenSolaris or can the tools work through the KCS 
> with out it?

Something is coming back to me about this.  In Linux/BSD, we do memory
mapped I/O from userspace to do the KCS.  However, in Solaris,
apparently this is not allowed and you can only do the I/O via a driver.
So it would suggest that the driver is required, but I am not a Solaris
expert in any way.

Is it possible you're looking at the "default" outputs from ipmi-locate
and not an actual discovered KCS device?

> An education on the need of the kernel driver and any suggestions on 
> an unencumbered replacement or a recommendation on a platform such as 
> FreeBSD that might be a good reference for writing a new one which 
> the FreeIPMI tools would be happy with would be very appreciated.

Last I recall, the KCS driver is what is used by people on FreeBSD for
FreeIPMI.  But again, I'm not sure if the userspace KCS driver is
"legal" on Solaris.  Presumably a OS kernel driver would have to be
written.

Al

On Fri, 2010-04-30 at 12:48 -0700, Lance Beazley wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am new to FreeIPMI tools would like to get them working on
> OpenSolaris but the Solaris BMC driver is apparently encumbered and
> therefore not distributed with OpenSolaris. I see several posts on the
> web and even a defect on the OpenSolaris site that talk about using
> the binary BMC driver from an Express Edition distribution but Oracle
> is no longer distributing the Express Edition so I am wondering what
> FreeIPMI users based on OpenSolaris are doing to get FreeIPMI tools to
> play there.
> 
> Also I see an implication in the documentation for FreeIPMI tools that
> the kernel driver may not be needed and indeed the ipmi-locate tool
> does locate the KCS interface of the BMC on my platforms but none of
> the other tools play. Instead they all report similar errors such as,
> "could not find inband device". Is the kernel mode BMC driver
> necessary on OpenSolaris or can the tools work through the KCS with
> out it?
> 
> An education on the need of the kernel driver and any suggestions on
> an unencumbered replacement or a recommendation on a platform such as
> FreeBSD that might be a good reference for writing a new one which the
> FreeIPMI tools would be happy with would be very appreciated.
> 
> Lance Beazley
> _______________________________________________
> Freeipmi-users mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://*lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freeipmi-users
> 
-- 
Albert Chu
address@hidden
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory