I released v1.0 of the OpenBMC port for ADLINK Ampere Altra systems yesterday.
It allows you to run the open source OpenBMC firmware on the AST2500 Baseboard Management Controller instead of the proprietary AMI MegaRAC.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a path to switch from MegaRAC to OpenBMC. So if anyone would like to run OpenBMC instead of the MegaRAC firmware that comes with the systems, please contact me and I can send you replacement SPI-NOR EEPROMs.
To get the EEPROMs, email me with your address and how you’d like to pay for them (each 128MB chip costs $13, plus postage and packaging). My email address is rebecca@bsdio.com.
Not sure the best place to ask so I will do it here. I received my EEPROMs and installed them. However, while I can get into OpenBMC and control the Power and do most things, the system, when booting, locks up in the bios. It gets past the screen where you can press esc to enter the bios settings, but hitting esc does not get you to the settings. Do I need a custom UEFI/BIOS build also?
Sorry, it appears to be a bug in the 20231129 EDK2 firmware. Unfortunately I missed it since I’ve been running a custom build for a while.
I’ve had reports that the build I created a few weeks ago allows people to get past that point and boot into the OS, though it might be slower than the existing firmware: Release v0.1-bexcran · bcran/edk2_aadp · GitHub
Great job on releasing v1.0 of the OpenBMC port for ADLINK Ampere Altra systems! Offering replacement SPI-NOR EEPROMs for users interested in switching from MegaRAC to OpenBMC is a helpful initiative. Keep up the good work
Hey @bexcran ! Finally got around to dropping in those two chips, but I think I ran into that same bug dgilmore ran into, had to swapped em back…can I use the steps in your demo on YouTube to transform MegaRAC to OpenBMC now? And I just need the embedded_reflash and obmc-comhpcalt-v3.03.101-bexcran-32MB.static.mtd files to flash?
Most excellent, thank you - I went ahead and flashed it (hehe I’m gutsy), 32mb version like from the video - not getting anything coming up on the BMC. It gets an IP but doesn’t transmit/receive more than 380B over the network which seems like a DHCP request. Any thoughts? Did I get the wrong size for the default chips in the AADP?
Nevermind me - I’m an idiot, Layer 8 issue - you are incredible. This is great! Redfish?!?! Ahhhhhhh!
One oddity - when the system is powered down, KVM is Connected by shows a blank screen…when the system is on, KVM shows Disconnected the entire time. Expected behavior?
