Hi all,
What BMC can we install on Librem server? openBMC or other one? Has any one done it? My problem is that i cannot set the fans and other functions triggerd from the normally from the firmware BMC that is disabled on my Librem server.
Best thanks for your experience return.
Yes, the BMC is a pain point, still 
If you do not want to trust the BMC installed, which we don’t and thus disable it, you are in the situation that you describe, which is a bit unfortunate.
The BMC controller chip is an AST2400 which has pretty decent support in OpenBMC. But this only covers the BMC chip itself. What is needed is all the glue porting effort to adapt it to the main boards and here the issues start. For that you either need to kind of reverse engineer the original BMC firmware or the main board to figure out what is connected where and how.
Some time ago I started this on a different server test board and got OpenBMC booting at some point, I was also able to log in to it. But fan control was not working yet, the BMC ethernet was screwed up, no serial console etc. A ton of work. I also tried to get in touch with the main board manufacturer to get information for finishing the port but they never responded.
So yes, I think it is feasible to create an OpenBMC or some other Linux port for the AST2400 BMC on the Librem servers. But it is a ton of work and with all honesty, although I’d love to, right now we do not have the resources for it, I’m afraid. If someone is interested in working on it, please get in touch with me and I’ll gladly see if and how we can help with it! But right now we can not do it on our own.
Cheers
nicole
Hi Nicole,
Thanks for your contribution. Well at the moment is the server unusable because of the fan noise. And that is quite a big problem because I bought it thinking I could use it…
I have not tried yet the openBMC because of your comments but I have found this link about u-bmc : https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/2/242346-opening-up-the-baseboard-management-controller/fulltext
What do you think of it ?
If not, and with the goal keeping thr server the more secure, would you recommend me to install an external fan control system (at least with manual regulation…), so that my main problem at the moment is to begin using the server ?
Cheers
Lionel