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Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi

(mtlynch.io)
756 points mtlynch | 3 comments | 23 Jul 20 13:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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louwrentius ◴[23 Jul 20 22:07 UTC] No.23933005[source]▶
I respect this effort, I think it's a great accomplishment.

I think most people are better off building their own home (lab) server with a motherboard that supports IPMI (KVM over IP) natively.

Supermicro (only brand I've experience with) or other brands that build server motherboards all include IPMI with HTML5 support.

Doing so will save you a lot of trouble. Maybe you may not be able to run the kind of hardware you want, but it's all a tradeoff. You have to choose.

I have HP Microservers (quiet) and a Proliant (loud) all with ILo (HP IMPI) and it's awesome.

replies(1): >>23934558 #
1. voltagex_ ◴[24 Jul 20 01:03 UTC] No.23934558[source]▶
So the recent Supermicros have a HTML5 iKVM, but mine originally came with a Java-only thing. When I had to send my box away to get repaired (Intel C2000 bug) it magically came back with a newer firmware that wasn't listed on their site and supported HTML5. I haven't been able to get remote ISOs working with the new interface, though.
replies(1): >>23935389 #
2. toast0 ◴[24 Jul 20 03:23 UTC] No.23935389[source]▶
At my last job, some of the Supermicro servers I worked with needed their SSD firmware updated. The hosting company's firmware update tool didn't actually update the SSD firmware (ugh) and it took forever, so I started doing the updates with remote ISOs, but some of the hosts had gone through the hosting company's tool which sometimes updated the IPMI firmware even though I didn't tell it to (double ugh). For those, I ended up loading the ISOs via PXELINUX's ISO loader. Kind of gross, but it got the job done -- might be an option for you?
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3. voltagex_ ◴[27 Jul 20 01:02 UTC] No.23961397[source]▶
Yeah, I think PXELINUX and iPXE are using the same kind of tricks to load ISOs like this (if anyone wants to do a writeup I'd love to read it). I think I'm going to have to dig in and understand the "redfish" API that also appeared with the update.