[Beowulf] Re: Any industry-standards that allow automated BIOS modifications and dumping? IPMI cannot do it, can it?

[Rahul Nabar]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Mark Hahn <hahn at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>> #####load the required drivers
>> modprobe ipmi_devintf
>> modprobe ipmi_si
>> modprobe ipmi_msghandler
>
> IMO, you shouldn't: when permanently active, the local ipmi interface seems
> to consume noticable cycles (kipmi thread). just modprobe when you need it
> and rmmod after...

Good point. I will do that. The first time around local impi is useful
to change the password and DHCP etc. THat's why I had to load those
drivers.

> definitely not in general.  a vendor could certainly provide IPMI
> extensions that manipulate bios settings.  but the market doesn't seem to
> find this kind of HPC-mostly concern worthwhile :(

Hmm, the lack of a BIOS-mod standard is unfortunate. Maybe it will be
there sometime!...shouldn't this be an enterprise-level concern not
just HPC? I mean what if you have 200 Windows machines and wanted to
turn hyperthreading off in the BIOS. It still boils down to some sort
of standardized interface to change it remotely and automatically.
Unless the admins change those manually.....

> bios-serial-redirection and serial-over-lan can let you do it manually.

I know about SOL but what's the "bios-serial-redirection". Is that the
same or a different system?

-- 
Rahul