Server platforms: experiment with your expensive hardware too!
summary
Identifies the on‑board AST2500 BMC (ARM11 @800MHz, ~512MB RAM) as a modifiable Linux host, finds TTL serial pads and the BMC SPI flash with a logic probe, and reflashes firmware using a Bus Pirate to boot an upstream kernel and Buildroot userland (the BMC shows epoch time zero due to no RTC). Describes LPC/PCI/USB/I2C host‑BMC channels, remote VGA and serial over network via IPMI/Redfish, recommends external flash programmer and starting on non‑mission‑critical hardware.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:50Who is Jeremy
- 3:30What is a server
- 5:33BPMC
- 5:55Server style functionality
- 9:10Host and BMC spectrum
- 13:10The AST2500
- 15:16The BMC
- 16:42Using the BMC
- 21:00Linux
- 28:16Buses
- 29:32LPC
- 30:40LPCAHB
- 31:27Security
- 35:13OpenBMC
- 36:52Wrap up
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