Re: [Freeipmi-devel] [SPAM] - RE: Retrieving BIOS information via IPMI - Email found in subject

[Andy Cress]

Hmmm.  I didn't know that.  So in this case the SuperMicro BIOS has opened a proprietary conduit via the IPMI firmware.  And the commands are then passed via IPMI LAN to the BIOS (in main memory) which has access to the data and responds.  I guess the elaborate key mechanism is more for licensing than for security. 

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Hank Bruning <address@hidden> wrote:

Vinny,
It has been a while since I looked at this but I think SuperMicro stores an activation key in the BMC that enables the BIOS set/get functionality, by default it is disabled. The key is unique per server and it's encoding is proprietary. The unlock method is done over an encrypted  link. If you find out something different please let me know,

Hank

JBlade

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Vinny Vallarine <address@hidden> wrote:

Andy, just to shed some light on my additional findings.  I’ve received a trial license for SuperMicro’s http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SMS_SUM.cfm tool (good info at http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/files/SSM/SSM_brochure.pdf).  From the command line, I’ve been able to remotely (OOB) retrieve and set every possible BIOS setting from/to the server, quite awesome actually.  This must mean that SuperMicro is exposing their BIOS data out to the IPMI interface, no?  Unless they have some other proprietary communication channel (besides IPMI) between this SUM tool and the server itself.  I have this question out to SuperMicro but haven’t heard back, just looking for any thoughts you may have. 

 

My thoughts are that, since this full BIOS OOB communication is happening, I should be able to develop my own interface to get/set this information if the data is transferred via IPMI.  This SUM tools is licensed on a per node basis and can get expensive for 1000’s of nodes.

 

 

Thanks again,

 

Vinny