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1 | .TH amt-howto 7 "(c) 2007 Gerd Hoffmann" |
2 | .SH SYNOPSIS | |
3 | Intel AMT with linux mini howto | |
4 | .SH DESCRIPTION | |
5 | ||
6 | .SS What is AMT and why I should care? | |
7 | AMT stands for "Active Management Technology". It provides some | |
8 | remote management facilities. They are handled by the hardware and | |
9 | firmware, thus they work independant from the operation system. | |
10 | Means: It works before Linux bootet up to the point where it activated | |
11 | the network interface. It works even when your most recent test | |
12 | kernel deadlocked the machine. Which makes it quite useful for | |
13 | development machines ... | |
14 | .P | |
15 | Intel AMT is part of the vPro Platform. Recent intel-chipset based | |
16 | business machines should have it. My fairly new Intel SDV machine has | |
17 | it too. | |
18 | ||
19 | .SS Documentation | |
20 | Look here for documentation beyond this mini howto: | |
21 | .br | |
22 | http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/engage.htm | |
23 | .br | |
24 | Most useful to get started: "Intel AMT Deployment and Reference Guide" | |
25 | ||
26 | .SS Very short AMT enabling instructions. | |
27 | .TP | |
28 | Enter BIOS Setup. | |
29 | * Enable AMT | |
30 | .TP | |
31 | Enter ME (Management Extention) Setup. Ctrl-P hotkey works for me. | |
32 | * Login, factory default password is "admin". | |
33 | .br | |
34 | * Change password. Trivial ones don't work, must include upper- | |
35 | and lowercase letters, digits, special characters. | |
36 | .br | |
37 | * Enable AMT Managment. | |
38 | .TP | |
39 | Reboot, Enter ME Setup again with AMT enabled. | |
40 | * Configure AMT (hostname, network config, ...) | |
41 | .br | |
42 | * Use SMB (Small Business) management mode. The other one | |
43 | (Enterprise) requires Active Directory Service Infrastructure, | |
44 | you don't want that, at least not for your first steps ... | |
45 | ||
46 | .SS Testing AMT | |
47 | Take your browser, point it to http://machine:16992/. If you | |
48 | configured AMT to use DHCP (which is the default) the OS and the | |
49 | management stack share the same IP address. | |
50 | .P | |
51 | You must do that from a remote host as the NIC intercepts network | |
52 | packets for AMT, thus it doesn't work from the local machine as the | |
53 | packets never pass the NIC then. If everything is fine you'll see a | |
54 | greeting page with a button for login. | |
55 | .P | |
56 | You can login now, using "admin" as username and the password | |
57 | configured during setup. You'll see some pages with informations | |
58 | about the machine. You can also change AMT settings here. | |
59 | ||
60 | .SS Control Machine | |
61 | You might have noticed already while browing the pages: There is a | |
62 | "Remote Control" page. You can remotely reset and powercycle the | |
63 | machine there, thus recover the machine after booting a b0rken kernel, | |
64 | without having someone walk over to the machine and hit the reset | |
65 | button. | |
66 | ||
67 | .SS Serial-over-LAN (SOL) console | |
68 | AMT also provides a virtual serial port which can be accessed via | |
69 | network. That gives you a serial console without a serial cable to | |
70 | another machine. | |
71 | .P | |
72 | If you have activated AMT and SOL the linux kernel should see an | |
73 | additional serial port, like this on my machine: | |
74 | .P | |
75 | .nf | |
76 | [root@xeni ~]# dmesg | grep ttyS2 | |
77 | 0000:00:03.3: ttyS2 at I/O 0xe000 (irq = 169) is a 16550A | |
78 | .fi | |
79 | .P | |
80 | Edit initab, add a line like this: | |
81 | .P | |
82 | .nf | |
83 | S2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS2 115200 vt100-nav | |
84 | .fi | |
85 | .P | |
86 | You should add the serial port to /etc/securetty too so you are able | |
87 | to login as root. Reload inittab ("init q"). Use amtterm to connect. | |
88 | Tap enter. You should see a login prompt now and be able to login. | |
89 | .P | |
90 | You can also use that device as console for the linux kernel, using | |
91 | the usual "console=ttyS2,115200" kernel command line argument, so you | |
92 | see the boot messages (and kernel Oopses, if any). | |
93 | .P | |
94 | You can tell grub to use that serial device, so you can pick a working | |
95 | kernel for the next boot. Usual commands from the grub manual, except | |
96 | that you need "--port=0xe000" instead of "--unit=0" due to the | |
97 | non-standard I/O port for the serial line (my machine, yours might use | |
98 | another port, check linux kernel boot messages). | |
99 | .P | |
100 | The magic command for the Xen kernel is "com1=115200,8n1,0xe000,0" | |
101 | (again, you might have to replace the I/O port). The final '0' | |
102 | disables the IRQ, otherwise the Xen kernel hangs at boot after | |
103 | enabling interrupts. | |
104 | ||
105 | .SS Fun with Xen and AMT | |
106 | The AMT network stack seems to become slightly confused when running | |
107 | on a Xen host in DHCP mode. Everything works fine as long as only | |
108 | Dom0 runs. But if one starts a guest OS (with bridged networking) AMT | |
109 | suddenly changes the IP address to the one the guest aquired via DHCP. | |
110 | .P | |
111 | It is probably a good idea to assign a separate static IP address to | |
112 | AMT then. I didn't manage to switch my machine from DHCP to static IP | |
113 | yet though, the BIOS refuses to accept the settings. The error | |
114 | message doesn't indicate why. | |
115 | ||
116 | .SS More fun with AMT | |
117 | You might want to download the DTK (Developer Toolkit, source code is | |
118 | available too) and play with it. The .exe is a self-extracting rar | |
119 | archive and can be unpacked on linux using the unrar utility. The | |
120 | Switchbox comes with a linux binary (additionally to the Windows | |
121 | stuff). The GUI tools are written in C#. Trying to make them fly | |
122 | with mono didn't work for me though (mono version 1.2.3 as shipped | |
123 | with Fedora 7). | |
124 | ||
125 | .SH SEE ALSO | |
126 | amtterm(1), gamt(1), amttool(1) | |
127 | .P | |
128 | http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/ | |
129 | .SH WRITTEN BY | |
130 | Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> |