AMD Execution Thread [2025]

[Albuquerque]

I find it difficult to develop something so low level remotely. What if the kernel crashes all hardware?

This is where IPMI comes in. It's baseboard level, even below the firmware. If a Linux kernel crashes so hard as to hard-lock the box, you can still get in and power-cycle it. This is a very common technology on datacenter floors for decades because, so long as the box has literal power and the IPMI device has a network connection, you can do anything to the box as if you were physically sitting in front of it.

 

[arandomguy]

You misunderstood. I am saying George Hotz does little more than whine on twitter. Hardware reviewers review hardware, that is their 'product' and it ends up being marketing for the manufacturer anyways.

I'm being facetious with that "whine on twitter" framing but really at the core it's the same thing in that they're basically broadcasting to the public as a marketing exchange proposition. None of those groups inherently deserves considerations but ultimately it's the same cost/benefit (future benefit) analysis for the company to make.

I'll admit I'm really just poking at the idea that hardware reviewers derserve hardware samples and that they are a public service when in reality they're a business like any other and anything they do should just be viewed from a business angle.

 

[Florin]

I find it difficult to develop something so low level remotely. What if the kernel crashes all hardware?

I'm not sure how that would ever be a problem. You can reset or power cycle any kind of instance using the cloud vendor GUI or API.
If the actual hardware underlying the VM had somehow crashed they'd just spawn your instance on another server from their pool.
And if you somehow managed to get the kernel on your instance in a state that is borked right upon boot you could always revert to a previous snapshot of the storage beforehand, or even reinstall the instance's OS altogether.

IPMI and BMC access take this to another level, still. Even if the server's actual hardware crashes IPMI will still allow you to login from remote and power cycle the whole unit, or use screen/keyboard/mouse to fix anything, right up to going into the BIOS/firmware to change any settings.

IPMI/BMC works like a remote KVM, or a sort of separate server within your server if you will. There literally isn't anything your software can do to your server that would prevent IPMI/BMC from still being able to provide you control.

 

[IQandHDR]

For people never doing OOB(Out of Band) mgmt before:
HPE ILO:

Dell iDrac:

Cisco CIMC:

Every single server I have worked on have had this.
You can sit in another country and do work like if you were located at the server with keyboard/mouse og monitor attached.

Everything from installing a OS to doing a power cycle.
It is at the foundation for running a datacenter/serverpark.

It also house the server-logs, so you can pull supportlogs for the vendor in case of RMA of parts.