[Beowulf] any creative ways to crash Linux?: does a shared NIC IMPI always remain responsive?

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Rahul Nabar <rpnabar at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see. So I assume the BMC's network stack is something that's
> hardware or firmware implemented.

The BMC is a CPU running some firmware. It's a low power one though,
as it doesn't usually have to do too many things and it should not
consume significant power while the main system is off. Some BMCs even
run a ssh or http daemon to allow an easier interaction.

> It's funny that in spite of this the
> IPMI gets hung sometimes (like Gerry says in his reply). I guess I can
> just attribute that to bad firmware coding in the BMC.

Sometimes the BMC can simply become overloaded. I've been told that
some BMCs can't cope with a high network load, especially with
broadcast packets. I have always considered the BMC as a blackbox or
appliance, good for only one thing, so maybe someone with a better
understanding of its inner architecture can provide some more
details...

--
Bogdan