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flolo
Asked: 2011-08-10 04:14:08 +0800 CST

Intel AMT - enable vnc via linux

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All our old servers have supermicro boards and we used IPMI to make out-of-band managment. Mostly we used it for shutdown/restart and sometimes change some settings via the sol/kvm console. As it happens one of our new servers has an Intel board with vPro/AMT. We enabled it and were really disappointed from the webgui it offers, which is very limited compared to our usual IMPI soliution.

Our main problem is now: How can we enable the +#?=)(&/%$§" kvm vnc. AMT supports it from version 6, we have 7. We activated in the bios settings kvm, SOL, and IDER. But there seems no vnc server to run (an easy telnet servername 5900 shows this). Some digging on the really spare sites on the all-knowing internet seem to indicate that you have to enable it in addition to the BIOS setting with a Managability Tool from Intel. (Not sure why it is this way, and there is not a BIOS option for it) - but if it is so, we dont know how to do it, as we have a Unix (Linux + Solaris) only environment and dont can use it (its a windows tool).

It seems there are driver for Linux from Intel that you can make those seetings not via network but direct on the host - but guess what? We want that console to install a system on it, so we have no system at all on the machine itself.

Anybody knows of any solution for this? We already installed on our other machines the amttools but give just a SOL terminal (which shows NOT the BIOS messages) and mirrors the functionality of the very limited webgui.

Update: As solution we used now a private laptop with windows. We installed this SOAP messages generating batch scripts from Intel on it and activated it once. So we have now working vnc - but I would gladly hear another solution, as (we already checked it) when the AMT is (partially) reseted the setting is also gone.

linux vnc intel amt

1 Answers

  1. We have need of this as well, and found what to do. Basically, you need to use the wsmancli (Cross-Vendor Web-Services Management API) package to assist you. I've included a template script to get you going. There are other utilities to operate with WS Management, search around if interested.

    Install on Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get install wsmancli

    After Installed:

    ip=<IP of AMT>    
AMT_PASSWORD="<your password for the 'admin' user>"

# Must be exactly *8 characters long* and contain at least one of each:
#   [ lower case, upper case, number, special character ]
VNC_PASSWORD="<what password you want for VNC>"


# Enable KVM
wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h $ip -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k RFBPassword=${VNC_PASSWORD}

# Enable KVM redirection to port 5900
wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h $ip -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k Is5900PortEnabled=true

# Disable opt-in policy
wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h $ip -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k OptInPolicy=false

# Disable session timeout
wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h $ip -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k SessionTimeout=0

# Enable KVM
wsman invoke -a RequestStateChange http://schemas.dmtf.org/wbem/wscim/1/cim-schema/2/CIM_KVMRedirectionSAP -h ${ip} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k RequestedState=2
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