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

NAME
     amt-howto - Intel AMT with linux mini howto

DESCRIPTION
   What is AMT and why I should care?
     AMT  stands  for  "Active	Management Technology".  It provides some remote
     management facilities.  They are handled by the hardware and firmware, thus
     they work independant from the operation system.  Means:  It  works  before
     Linux  bootet up to the point where it activated the network interface.  It
     works even when your most recent test kernel deadlocked the machine.  Which
     makes it quite useful for development machines ...

     Intel AMT is part of the vPro Platform.  Recent intel-chipset  based  busi-
     ness machines should have it.  My fairly new Intel SDV machine has it too.

   Documentation
     Look here for documentation beyond this mini howto:
     http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/
     Most useful to get started: "Intel AMT Deployment and Reference Guide"

   Very short AMT enabling instructions.
     Enter BIOS Setup.
	    * Enable AMT

     Enter ME (Management Extention) Setup.  Ctrl-P hotkey works for me.
	    * Login, factory default password is "admin".
	    * Change password.	Trivial ones don't work, must include upper- and
	    lowercase letters, digits, special characters.
	    * Enable AMT Managment.

     Reboot, Enter ME Setup again with AMT enabled.
	    * Configure AMT (hostname, network config, ...)
	    *  Use  SMB (Small Business) management mode.  The other one (Enter-
	    prise) requires Active Directory Service Infrastructure,  you  don't
	    want that, at least not for your first steps ...

   Testing AMT
     Take  your  browser,  point it to http://machine:16992/.  If you configured
     AMT to use DHCP (which is the default) the  OS  and  the  management  stack
     share the same IP address.

     You  must	do that from a remote host as the NIC intercepts network packets
     for AMT, thus it doesn't work from the local machine as the  packets  never
     pass the NIC then.  If everything is fine you'll see a greeting page with a
     button for login.

     You  can  login  now, using "admin" as username and the password configured
     during setup.  You'll see some pages with informations about  the	machine.
     You can also change AMT settings here.

   Control Machine
     You  might have noticed already while browing the pages: There is a "Remote
     Control" page.  You can remotely reset and powercycle  the  machine  there,
     thus  recover  the  machine  after  booting a b0rken kernel, without having
     someone walk over to the machine and hit the reset button.

   Serial-over-LAN (SOL) console
     AMT also provides a virtual serial port which can be accessed via	network.
     That gives you a serial console without a serial cable to another machine.

     If you have activated AMT and SOL the linux kernel should see an additional
     serial port, like this on my machine:

       [root@xeni ~]# dmesg | grep ttyS2
       0000:00:03.3: ttyS2 at I/O 0xe000 (irq = 169) is a 16550A

     Edit initab, add a line like this:

       S2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS2 115200 vt100-nav

     You should add the serial port to /etc/securetty too so you are able to lo-
     gin  as root.  Reload inittab ("init q").	Use amtterm to connect.  Tap en-
     ter.  You should see a login prompt now and be able to login.

     You can also use that device as console for the  linux  kernel,  using  the
     usual  "console=ttyS2,115200"  kernel command line argument, so you see the
     boot messages (and kernel Oopses, if any).

     You can tell grub to use that serial device, so you can pick a working ker-
     nel for the next boot.  Usual commands from the grub  manual,  except  that
     you  need "--port=0xe000" instead of "--unit=0" due to the non-standard I/O
     port for the serial line (my machine, yours might use another  port,  check
     linux kernel boot messages).

     The  magic command for the Xen kernel is "com1=115200,8n1,0xe000,0" (again,
     you might have to replace the I/O port).  The final '0' disables  the  IRQ,
     otherwise the Xen kernel hangs at boot after enabling interrupts.

   Fun with Xen and AMT
     The  AMT  network stack seems to become slightly confused when running on a
     Xen host in DHCP mode.  Everything works fine as long as  only  Dom0  runs.
     But if one starts a guest OS (with bridged networking) AMT suddenly changes
     the IP address to the one the guest aquired via DHCP.

     It  is  probably  a good idea to assign a separate static IP address to AMT
     then.  I didn't manage to switch my machine from  DHCP  to  static  IP  yet
     though, the BIOS refuses to accept the settings.  The error message doesn't
     indicate why.

   More fun with AMT
     You  might  want  to  download  the  DTK (Developer Toolkit, source code is
     available too) and play with it.  The .exe is a self-extracting rar archive
     and can be unpacked on linux using the unrar utility.  The Switchbox  comes
     with a linux binary (additionally to the Windows stuff).  The GUI tools are
     written in C#.  Trying to make them fly with mono didn't work for me though
     (mono version 1.2.3 as shipped with Fedora 7).

SEE ALSO
     amtterm(1), gamt(1), amttool(1)

     http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/intel-amt/

WRITTEN BY
     Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>

			     (c) 2007 Gerd Hoffmann		    amt-howto(7)

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<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=amt-howto&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

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