1amt-howto(7)           Miscellaneous Information Manual           amt-howto(7)
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NAME

6       amt-howto - Intel AMT with linux mini howto
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DESCRIPTION

9   What is AMT and why I should care?
10       AMT stands for "Active Management Technology".  It provides some remote
11       management facilities.  They are handled by the hardware and  firmware,
12       thus  they work independant from the operation system.  Means: It works
13       before Linux bootet up to the point  where  it  activated  the  network
14       interface.   It works even when your most recent test kernel deadlocked
15       the machine.  Which makes it quite useful for development machines ...
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17       Intel AMT is part of the vPro  Platform.   Recent  intel-chipset  based
18       business  machines should have it.  My fairly new Intel SDV machine has
19       it too.
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21
22   Documentation
23       Look here for documentation beyond this mini howto:
24       http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/
25       Most useful to get started: "Intel AMT Deployment and Reference Guide"
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27
28   Very short AMT enabling instructions.
29       Enter BIOS Setup.
30              * Enable AMT
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32       Enter ME (Management Extention) Setup.  Ctrl-P hotkey works for me.
33              * Login, factory default password is "admin".
34              * Change password.  Trivial ones don't work, must include upper-
35              and lowercase letters, digits, special characters.
36              * Enable AMT Managment.
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38       Reboot, Enter ME Setup again with AMT enabled.
39              * Configure AMT (hostname, network config, ...)
40              *  Use  SMB  (Small  Business)  management  mode.  The other one
41              (Enterprise) requires Active Directory  Service  Infrastructure,
42              you don't want that, at least not for your first steps ...
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44
45   Testing AMT
46       Take  your  browser, point it to http://machine:16992/.  If you config‐
47       ured AMT to use DHCP (which is the default) the OS and  the  management
48       stack share the same IP address.
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50       You must do that from a remote host as the NIC intercepts network pack‐
51       ets for AMT, thus it doesn't work from the local machine as the packets
52       never  pass  the NIC then.  If everything is fine you'll see a greeting
53       page with a button for login.
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55       You can login now, using "admin" as username and the  password  config‐
56       ured  during  setup.  You'll see some pages with informations about the
57       machine.  You can also change AMT settings here.
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60   Control Machine
61       You might have noticed already while browing  the  pages:  There  is  a
62       "Remote  Control"  page.   You  can  remotely  reset and powercycle the
63       machine there, thus recover the machine after booting a b0rken  kernel,
64       without  having someone walk over to the machine and hit the reset but‐
65       ton.
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67
68   Serial-over-LAN (SOL) console
69       AMT also provides a virtual serial port which can be accessed via  net‐
70       work.   That  gives  you  a  serial  console  without a serial cable to
71       another machine.
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73       If you have activated AMT and SOL the linux kernel should see an  addi‐
74       tional serial port, like this on my machine:
75
76         [root@xeni ~]# dmesg | grep ttyS2
77         0000:00:03.3: ttyS2 at I/O 0xe000 (irq = 169) is a 16550A
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79       Edit initab, add a line like this:
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81         S2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS2 115200 vt100-nav
82
83       You should add the serial port to /etc/securetty too so you are able to
84       login as root.  Reload inittab ("init q").   Use  amtterm  to  connect.
85       Tap enter.  You should see a login prompt now and be able to login.
86
87       You can also use that device as console for the linux kernel, using the
88       usual "console=ttyS2,115200" kernel command line argument, so  you  see
89       the boot messages (and kernel Oopses, if any).
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91       You  can tell grub to use that serial device, so you can pick a working
92       kernel for the next boot.  Usual commands from the grub manual,  except
93       that  you  need  "--port=0xe000"  instead of "--unit=0" due to the non-
94       standard I/O port for the serial line  (my  machine,  yours  might  use
95       another port, check linux kernel boot messages).
96
97       The  magic  command  for  the  Xen kernel is "com1=115200,8n1,0xe000,0"
98       (again, you might have to replace the I/O port).  The  final  '0'  dis‐
99       ables  the  IRQ,  otherwise the Xen kernel hangs at boot after enabling
100       interrupts.
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103   Fun with Xen and AMT
104       The AMT network stack seems to become slightly confused when running on
105       a  Xen  host  in DHCP mode.  Everything works fine as long as only Dom0
106       runs.  But if one starts a guest OS (with bridged networking) AMT  sud‐
107       denly changes the IP address to the one the guest aquired via DHCP.
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109       It  is  probably  a good idea to assign a separate static IP address to
110       AMT then.  I didn't manage to switch my machine from DHCP to static  IP
111       yet though, the BIOS refuses to accept the settings.  The error message
112       doesn't indicate why.
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114
115   More fun with AMT
116       You might want to download the DTK (Developer Toolkit, source  code  is
117       available too) and play with it.  The .exe is a self-extracting rar ar‐
118       chive and can be unpacked  on  linux  using  the  unrar  utility.   The
119       Switchbox  comes  with  a  linux  binary  (additionally  to the Windows
120       stuff).  The GUI tools are written in C#.  Trying to make them fly with
121       mono  didn't  work  for  me  though (mono version 1.2.3 as shipped with
122       Fedora 7).
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SEE ALSO

126       amtterm(1), gamt(1), amttool(1)
127
128       http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/
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WRITTEN BY

131       Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>
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135                            (c) 2007 Gerd Hoffmann                amt-howto(7)
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