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I can give you an example of why I think the code quality is questionable: At my work we use AMT for legitimate purposes: remote administration and support (we

by zaxomi 9y ago

I can give you an example of why I think the code quality is questionable: At my work we use AMT for legitimate purposes: remote administration and support (we have offices in different cities). A big problem for us is that the AMT crashes by itself and the computer needs to be power-cycled for the AMT to work again. Sometimes the web-interface don't answer, sometimes the passwords doesn't match anymore. I think there is a process that is writing where it shouldn't, because it works again after the computer is power-cycled by removing the power-cord. I now have a script that checks every registered computer twice a day , to see if it is still possible to login to the AMT, and if not, it sends an email to a person at the local office requesting them to restart the computers that fails. When it works it is a great tool, allowing us to fix computers and give support without the need to travel to each city.

ksk 9y ago
Thanks for that ! I'm looking to implement AMT (or something like it) at our office. I'm a developer but as the defacto sysadmin I was looking into how stable the AMT platform is. I occaisionally have to re-image machines, and I figured I could just ask people to plug it into a network jack and let me remotely take care of it.
katastic 9y ago
That's really pathetic that a "consumer ready" embedded piece of software whose whole job is remote-management... needs to be remotely managed because it crashes all the time.
acdha 9y ago
It's sad hearing that it hasn't changed much in over a decade — back when I was primarily doing sysadmin work, of the various manufacturers, only Sun's ILOM (on the V20z/V40z Opteron servers) seemed to reflect the existence of a QA department. IBM, Dell, HP, etc. all had problems like you described where the management processor would hang after receiving unexpected traffic (e.g. nmap scans), too many simultaneous logins, etc. and, naturally, nobody had thought to implement a watchdog timer to reboot if it became unresponsive even if they had the same functionality available for the actual server.

by zaxomi 9y ago

ksk 9y ago

Thanks for that ! I'm looking to implement AMT (or something like it) at our office. I'm a developer but as the defacto sysadmin I was looking into how stable the AMT platform is. I occaisionally have to re-image machines, and I figured I could just ask people to plug it into a network jack and let me remotely take care of it.

katastic 9y ago

That's really pathetic that a "consumer ready" embedded piece of software whose whole job is remote-management... needs to be remotely managed because it crashes all the time.

acdha 9y ago

It's sad hearing that it hasn't changed much in over a decade — back when I was primarily doing sysadmin work, of the various manufacturers, only Sun's ILOM (on the V20z/V40z Opteron servers) seemed to reflect the existence of a QA department. IBM, Dell, HP, etc. all had problems like you described where the management processor would hang after receiving unexpected traffic (e.g. nmap scans), too many simultaneous logins, etc. and, naturally, nobody had thought to implement a watchdog timer to reboot if it became unresponsive even if they had the same functionality available for the actual server.