[Beowulf] non-proprietary IPMI card?

[Erwan Velu]

Bill Broadley wrote:
>
> I've heard of folks successfully getting the tyan card to work:
>     http://www.tyan.com/products/html/m3291.html
> Anyone else using these cards?
[...]
I'm using some of theses.
>
> Does anyone know if IPMI can "share" a GigE port?  Or does it usually
> require a dedicated port on the host?
>
> In any case the card looks like it has a nice featureset and can be 
> mounted
> on a motherboard, in a drive bay, or in a pci slot.
As all ipmi cards I know, an ipmi card is dedicated to a manufacturer. 
This tyan card will only works on some Tyan motherboard.
I found this product no so easy to use for many reasons :
1- the 50pins ribbon cable is not very convinient to use, it takes a lot 
of place in a 1u rack
2- you need to setup another serial cable from the 3291 to the 
motherboard if you need to access the serial port
3- you need to choose the right firmware to match your motherboard. In 
my case, I was contacting the support to get the good one, this wasn't 
obvious.
4- Once the setup is set, sometimes I'm loosing the ipmi control, so I 
need to manually poweroff/poweron to get this ipmi card back.

So, for the IPMI systems I've been using, I really dislike this one. To 
much work to make it running fine.