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Re:Server BMCs can need to be rebooted every so often by lapinot on Sunday January 15, 2023 @04:00PM (#34393323)
Afaik the problem is typically not hardware but software, since most server motherboards come with a bmc chip on it. Are you designing a motherboard? All i would ask for a bmc is root access. But now everyone (but the big players, who design their own motherboards) is basically stuck with a stupid embedded linux with shitty software that has half-backed features they don't even need, but now need to care about. When all you'd need would be a way to access a host serial console, read sensors, control boot sequence and perhaps re-flash the bios, ie most likely just basic interactions on serial interfaces.
Re:Server BMCs can need to be rebooted every so often by rbanffy on Sunday January 15, 2023 @04:31PM (#34393684)
We got into that when we started expecting servers to have VGA and PS/2 ports because an RS-232 console would not be very useful with a GUI.

Is there a modular standard for BMCs?

Re:Server BMCs can need to be rebooted every so often by jebr224 on Sunday January 15, 2023 @11:54PM (#34396967)
There are two standards for pluggable BMC's

  - runbmc (https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-runbmc-daughterboard-card-design-specification-v1-4-1-pdf)

  - DC-SCM https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-dc-scm-spec-rev-1-0-pdf
I have only glanced the surface of these specs.
Re:Server BMCs can need to be rebooted every so often by klysm on Sunday January 15, 2023 @09:56PM (#34396291)
I was interested in building a board from scratch with a BMC on it
Re:Server BMCs can need to be rebooted every so often by jebr224 on Sunday January 15, 2023 @11:59PM (#34396992)
> Are you designing a motherboard? Yes, the team I work for designs server motherboards.

BMC security is what keeps me up at night. Firmware software quality is low, and often not up to date. I think openbmc does a good job in both respects.