6 ms·

The hardware looks pretty limited right now, but I have to wonder if this can be used as a base for replacing closed source Lights out Management such as iLO, D

by erric 8y ago

The hardware looks pretty limited right now, but I have to wonder if this can be used as a base for replacing closed source Lights out Management such as iLO, DRAC, and LoM

exikyut 8y ago
Interesting idea; but this is 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak links are mostly unknown for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port. IMO I'd generally want OOB management kit to be Very Very™ secure, and especially if it lets me near any secure boot keys. In any case this kind of thing will categorically have the ability to reboot the system, so if I can tinker with configuration I definitely want to have some degree of confidence in the auth process etc. Completely outside the scope of a microcontroller, what would a reasonable 10-year target for video capture be within a "server console/admin" context? 1080p? 2K? DisplayPort? HDMI? (Obviously VGA) I'm guessing HDMI and maybe 2K. Hm.
- pjc50 8y ago
  HDMI-over-IP is something you can just buy off Amazon for a few hundred dollars?
  - lizknope 8y ago
    Yes but you have to check what you buy carefully. There are HDMI over cat5/6 cable that are basically point to point and are basically just replacing the cable to transmit a longer distance. The more expensive products that claim to translate HDMI into IP and send over an ethernet network. I'm not sure if they are just turning into ethernet packets and only work on a LAN or if they turn into routable IP packets.
    - namibj 8y ago
      Worst case you need to teach the router to create a Layer2 VPN. It's doable.
      - LukeShu 8y ago
        The cases: - HDMI-over-IP-over-Ethernet-over-cat5 (best case) - HDMI-over-Ethernet-over-cat5 - HDMI-over-cat5 (worst case) If Ethernet (layer 2) isn't somewhere in there, you're not going to be able to set up a layer 2 network for it.
        namibj 8y ago
        Well sure. I guess I should be more specific, but the points was that as long as it works in a local Ethernet network, you are fine, as you can fix it reasonably easy by just encapsulating packets. And as long as you don't encrypt, you don't even need much/expensive hardware to handle e.g. 10 Gb/s Ethernet over an IP network. If you just have a passive thing that translates HDMI connectors to RJ-45 connectors, Ethernet won't help you. But if you use Ethernet, you can also use IP. That is all.
- erric 8y ago
  Agreed. There would be a ton of work to sift through that and using a modern BSD may likely be a better path forward. I just think it’s very interesting in how small a space this runs. Your other question is also a good one. I couldn’t hazard a guess what the next 10 years for video would be. I would guess display port in some format, but VGA is still kicking around a lot. For *nix serial still works quite well.
- toast0 8y ago
  Serial is still the best server console. Especially if you seperately have power control and a way to hit the drop to debugger interrupt.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- cat199 8y ago
  > 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak links are mostly unknown for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port. They're actually probably pretty well known for most things, just buried under decades of literature and commits. Starting off with a 4BSD would probably be better though since 32bit vax bsd unix got a lot more traction (and more direct code lineage to the modern ports). But yes, if going 32bit with enough ram, might as well just port OpenBSD/NetBSD and get on with it.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Any idea what the minimum RAM requirements of something like Open or NetBSD is? I know that modern FreeBSD can boot to a single user process with something like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel configuration. 64M gives a little more breathing room. But those are both many orders of magnitude larger than 128kB. It wouldn't surprise me if OBSD or NBSD can fit in a little less RAM, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they still need at least a handful of MB, i.e., 32-64x Retro's 128 kB.
    - nils-m-holm 8y ago
      > I know that modern FreeBSD can bootI to a single user process with something like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel configuration. Wow! My first BSD box (386BSD) had 8 megabytes of RAM and that was plenty! You could even compile moderately large programs without any swapping. But then, feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :)
      - loeg 8y ago
        > But then, feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :) In general, living software adapts to the constraints of the hardware developers use and care about. The most visible case of this is probably web browsers (and web sites). If BSD developers were interested in a minimal memory configuration, they could make it happen. It just hasn't been anyone's priority, and machines have many orders of magnitude more RAM today than they did in ~1992.
wmf 8y ago
BMCs are now powerful enough to run full Linux/BSD and there's a distro for them: https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc
- erric 8y ago
  Thank you, I hadn’t heard d of this yet.

by erric 8y ago

The hardware looks pretty limited right now, but I have to wonder if this can be used as a base for replacing closed source Lights out Management such as iLO, DRAC, and LoM

exikyut 8y ago

Interesting idea; but this is 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak links are mostly unknown for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port. IMO I'd generally want OOB management kit to be Very Very™ secure, and especially if it lets me near any secure boot keys. In any case this kind of thing will categorically have the ability to reboot the system, so if I can tinker with configuration I definitely want to have some degree of confidence in the auth process etc. Completely outside the scope of a microcontroller, what would a reasonable 10-year target for video capture be within a "server console/admin" context? 1080p? 2K? DisplayPort? HDMI? (Obviously VGA) I'm guessing HDMI and maybe 2K. Hm.

pjc50 8y ago
HDMI-over-IP is something you can just buy off Amazon for a few hundred dollars?
- lizknope 8y ago
  Yes but you have to check what you buy carefully. There are HDMI over cat5/6 cable that are basically point to point and are basically just replacing the cable to transmit a longer distance. The more expensive products that claim to translate HDMI into IP and send over an ethernet network. I'm not sure if they are just turning into ethernet packets and only work on a LAN or if they turn into routable IP packets.
  - namibj 8y ago
    Worst case you need to teach the router to create a Layer2 VPN. It's doable.
    - LukeShu 8y ago
      The cases: - HDMI-over-IP-over-Ethernet-over-cat5 (best case) - HDMI-over-Ethernet-over-cat5 - HDMI-over-cat5 (worst case) If Ethernet (layer 2) isn't somewhere in there, you're not going to be able to set up a layer 2 network for it.
      - namibj 8y ago
        Well sure. I guess I should be more specific, but the points was that as long as it works in a local Ethernet network, you are fine, as you can fix it reasonably easy by just encapsulating packets. And as long as you don't encrypt, you don't even need much/expensive hardware to handle e.g. 10 Gb/s Ethernet over an IP network. If you just have a passive thing that translates HDMI connectors to RJ-45 connectors, Ethernet won't help you. But if you use Ethernet, you can also use IP. That is all.
erric 8y ago
Agreed. There would be a ton of work to sift through that and using a modern BSD may likely be a better path forward. I just think it’s very interesting in how small a space this runs. Your other question is also a good one. I couldn’t hazard a guess what the next 10 years for video would be. I would guess display port in some format, but VGA is still kicking around a lot. For *nix serial still works quite well.
toast0 8y ago
Serial is still the best server console. Especially if you seperately have power control and a way to hit the drop to debugger interrupt.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
cat199 8y ago
> 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak links are mostly unknown for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port. They're actually probably pretty well known for most things, just buried under decades of literature and commits. Starting off with a 4BSD would probably be better though since 32bit vax bsd unix got a lot more traction (and more direct code lineage to the modern ports). But yes, if going 32bit with enough ram, might as well just port OpenBSD/NetBSD and get on with it.
- loeg 8y ago
  Any idea what the minimum RAM requirements of something like Open or NetBSD is? I know that modern FreeBSD can boot to a single user process with something like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel configuration. 64M gives a little more breathing room. But those are both many orders of magnitude larger than 128kB. It wouldn't surprise me if OBSD or NBSD can fit in a little less RAM, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they still need at least a handful of MB, i.e., 32-64x Retro's 128 kB.
  - nils-m-holm 8y ago
    > I know that modern FreeBSD can bootI to a single user process with something like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel configuration. Wow! My first BSD box (386BSD) had 8 megabytes of RAM and that was plenty! You could even compile moderately large programs without any swapping. But then, feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :)
    - loeg 8y ago
      > But then, feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :) In general, living software adapts to the constraints of the hardware developers use and care about. The most visible case of this is probably web browsers (and web sites). If BSD developers were interested in a minimal memory configuration, they could make it happen. It just hasn't been anyone's priority, and machines have many orders of magnitude more RAM today than they did in ~1992.

wmf 8y ago

BMCs are now powerful enough to run full Linux/BSD and there's a distro for them: https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc

erric 8y ago
Thank you, I hadn’t heard d of this yet.