Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 00/20] Add an IPMI device to QEMU

[Corey Minyard <minyard@acm.org>]

On 11/05/2013 10:09 AM, Andreas Färber wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am 05.11.2013 14:56, schrieb Michael S. Tsirkin:
>> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 05:07:56PM -0500, minyard@acm.org wrote:
>>> I have finally gotten some time to work on this, this series of
>>> patches adds an IPMI interface to qemu.  The changes are roughly:
>>>
>>> patches 01-05 - Add the capability to have a chardev reconnect if
>>> the connections fails.  This way, if using an external BMC, qemu
>>> will detect the failure and periodically attempt to reconnect.
>>> This also adds ways for the device code to get an event on a
>>> disconnect and connect so it can handle it properly.  This is
>>> probably useful for things besides IPMI.  There are also a few
>>> small bugfixes in this.
>>>
>>> patches 06-14 - Add the IPMI device itself, with an ISA interface
>>> for now (PCI and others can also be added easily).
>>>
>>> patches 15-18 - Add a way to dynamically add content to the ACPI
>>> tables, and add the capability to add the IPMI information to the
>>> table.
>>>
>>> Patches 19-20 - Add a way to dynamically add content to the SMBIOS
>>> tables, and add an IPMI entry to the table.
>>>
>> I was pointed at these patches as an example of useful
>> functionality that's out of qemu merely for lack of review
>> resources. I'd like to help.
>>
>> Now that we have code to generate ACPI tables
>> directly in qemu, this series can be rebased on top of
>> that, with no need for new FW CFG entries or bios changes.
>>
>> If you have the time, pls Cc me on patches and I'll try to
>> help shepherd them upstream.
> Me too, I have IPMI on my radar for 1.8/2.0.
>
> Our use case would be using IPMI tools to boot/reboot/shutdown a guest
> and to access its serial console as done for the physical hosts; we had
> discussed in the past where to locate such a TCP server component,
> whether in QEMU or libvirt - am I interpreting correctly that patch 11
> is preparing an interface to have that as external process now? Or is it
> hidden somewhere in patch 10 or is this unimplemented in this version?

Patch 11 does that, it gives an external interface.  The OpenIPMI
library has a
simulator that will plug in to this interface to provide BMC functions
and an
IPMI LAN interface.

You can do the boot/reboot/shutdown via the normal mechanisms with the
external simulator.  The internal simulator doesn't have an IPMI LAN
interface,
though, so you would need the external interface.

I also have not provided a serial over LAN interface through this
interface.  If
that's what you are looking for, more work would need to be done.

Thanks,

-corey

>
> Also, some of the IPMI acronyms in the commit messages (KCS, BT, ...)
> could use some explanation in the next version. ;)
>
> Regards,
> Andreas
>