[Beowulf] non-proprietary IPMI card?

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, David Mathog wrote:

> Also various magic settings in the BIOS and at run time.  It's not 
> only possible but common for a wake-on-lan card to refuse to WOL 
> because the card/CPU isn't in the right state.

Well, Mark didn't suggest for the IPMI card to behave like a WOL one, 
just for the power needed to function to be obtained the same way. The 
connections to the power/reset switches would take care of turning on 
and off the computer.

> some of the bits that enable WOL in the NIC are set by the OS during 
> the boot sequence, not by the BIOS.

Some network cards (like 3Com Cyclone and Tornado) have an internal 
EEPROM which can contain a set of commands to be executed upon 
powering up (well, from the point of view of the card, which might 
mean that the computer as a whole is still in a low power mode); these 
commands could set the card in WOL mode, IIRC - it's been 3-4 years 
since I looked at this...

Something very similar could be done in the BIOS of the mainboards 
with on-board NICs (like most NForce 4 ones), as there is already 
known which bits at which addresses have to be set. Of course, the 
BIOS writers would have to be convinced that this is a good idea... or 
maybe OpenBIOS could help.

--
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu at IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De