Re: [Freeipmi-devel] Retrieving BIOS information via IPMI

Thanks Al.

I'd be content at the moment to be able to retrieve the BIOS version number. Sounds like something as simple as that would be Vendor specific, correct?

We're interfacing with SuperMicro main boards. I know they have specific tools to do exactly what I need to do so I'm assuming they've added the needed extensions.

I'll check out your suggestions to see what is configurable and what the vendors have added.

Thanks,

Vinny

-----Original Message-----
From: Al Chu [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 12:24 PM
To: Vinny Vallarine
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Freeipmi-devel] Retrieving BIOS information via IPMI

Hi Vinny,

The IPMI specification does not support the ability to retrieve/modify BIOS options per se. The IPMI specification does allow modification of various motherboard parameters, many of which may happen to be readable/modifiable/managed by the BIOS.

So if you are looking to use IPMI for querying the BIOS, it really depends on what you would like to query. Not everything in the BIOS will be queryable.

For example, the chassis subsection of IPMI allows the configuration of a number of boot options. Many of these configuration options are likely in the BIOS (see ipmi-chassis-config tool to get an idea of what is configurable). General device information is available through various device queries and that may also be in the BIOS (see bmc-info tool for examples of info that is available). I believe some vendors support reading of the SEL in the BIOS for hardware analysis (see tool ipmi-sel for example).

As an aside, various vendors have added extensions to IPMI to retrieve/set BIOS settings, but these are on a vendor by vendor (many times motherboard by motherboard) basis. If you look through the tool ipmi-oem, you can see what some vendors have supported.

If one of the tools supports what you would like to do, then we can perhaps dig into the API from that point.

On Mon, 2014-01-06 at 10:20 -0500, Vinny Vallarine wrote:

> My company is looking for an IPMI package that we can interface with.

> I’ve just downloaded your freeIPMI package. What we need to do is

> query multiple machines and retrieve their BIOS revision numbers as

> well as specific BIOS settings. I’ve looked through your

> documentation but don’t see an API that would allow me to do that via

> your libraries. Could you let me know how this can be done through

> your libraries? I’m looking for the interface/methods that I can call

> to accomplish this.

> Thanks,

> Vincent Vallarine