rpi's

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kfox...@gmail.com

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Dec 31, 2020, 1:46:51 PM12/31/20
to Metal3 Development List
Anyone try to get metal3 running on a stack of Raspberry PI's yet? Cheap/Easy to build a quick physical test cluster to play with if its possible.

Thanks,
Kevin

Zane Bitter

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Jan 5, 2021, 10:46:16 AM1/5/21
to metal...@googlegroups.com
You'd need some sort of BMC (presumably another Pi) to control power and
boot, and it would have to speak some protocol already serviced by an
Ironic driver (hopefully Redfish at this point). I don't know that
anything like this already exists, as much as I would like to have one
under my desk.

cheers,
Zane.

Julia Kreger

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Jan 5, 2021, 11:10:34 AM1/5/21
to Zane Bitter, Metal3 Development List
I know some people have mused with the idea of deploying to RPIs, but
nobody that has actually achieved it in terms of building a BMC for
home usage for something like a Pi. Ironic has a manual management
interface which could be partially leveraged, but this wouldn't equate
to magically supporting arm hardware in general.

RPI's are also kind of particular with how they operate for the 2b to
3b+ versions. If memory serves they also look for configuration files
on the TFTP server. RPI4s have a different process as it was moved
into the second stage bootloader, but it appears some of the same
basic issues with a hard coded binary filename to load. I guess that
binary could possibly be a GRUB2 or iPXE EFI image. Unfortunately this
is one of those cases where RPIs are geared more towards a specific
audience that does not include server class machines or the deployment
of such.

Server class ARM hardware shouldn't be a problem with the appropriate
configuration, as the underlying firmware behaves similarly to x86
gear. At least, that was my experience with a few of the ARM systems
I've looked at over the years and the discussions I've had with
Lenaro's Engineering group.

-Julia

[0]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/net.md
[1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711_bootloader_config.md
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Julia Kreger

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Jan 6, 2021, 9:53:30 AM1/6/21
to Fox, Kevin M, Zane Bitter, Metal3 Development List
Most of the folks that have pondered trying to go down that path, that
I've spoken to at least, have kind of focused on using Sushy
(https://opendev.org/openstack/sushy) which is what we developed in
Ironic to facilitate Redfish CI testing. It has a plugin interface
that allows one to craft their own backend.

I think the issue that you're going to run into is being able to
influence/control boot devices, but maybe there is some magic signal
that can be sent!

-Julia

On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 11:11 AM Fox, Kevin M <Kevi...@pnnl.gov> wrote:
>
> I've only played with ipmi, not redfish at all. Has anyone played with this yet? https://github.com/DMTF/Redfish-Interface-Emulator
>
> That may be a good option for the software side?
>
> Thanks,
> Kevin
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Fox, Kevin M <Kevi...@pnnl.gov>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2021 9:44 AM
> To: Julia Kreger; Zane Bitter
> Cc: Metal3 Development List
> Subject: Re: [metal3-dev] rpi's
>
> I've toyed around with using a raspberry pi zero as a bmc for a pi4. hook up a relay to the zero, run the pi4 power through it, very simplistic bmc. If you want to get really fancy, you can link serial ports between the two as well for some consolish goodness. some python to emulate a bmc on the zero. Maybe good enough for ironic's needs?
>
> I'd be interested in chatting with others that are also interested in the topic. Maybe there are enough folks interested to make some progress together on it?
>
> Thanks,
> Kevin
>
> ________________________________________
> From: metal...@googlegroups.com <metal...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Julia Kreger <juliaash...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2021 8:10 AM
> To: Zane Bitter
> Cc: Metal3 Development List
> Subject: Re: [metal3-dev] rpi's
>
> Check twice before you click! This email originated from outside PNNL.
>
>
> I know some people have mused with the idea of deploying to RPIs, but
> nobody that has actually achieved it in terms of building a BMC for
> home usage for something like a Pi. Ironic has a manual management
> interface which could be partially leveraged, but this wouldn't equate
> to magically supporting arm hardware in general.
>
> RPI's are also kind of particular with how they operate for the 2b to
> 3b+ versions. If memory serves they also look for configuration files
> on the TFTP server. RPI4s have a different process as it was moved
> into the second stage bootloader, but it appears some of the same
> basic issues with a hard coded binary filename to load. I guess that
> binary could possibly be a GRUB2 or iPXE EFI image. Unfortunately this
> is one of those cases where RPIs are geared more towards a specific
> audience that does not include server class machines or the deployment
> of such.
>
> Server class ARM hardware shouldn't be a problem with the appropriate
> configuration, as the underlying firmware behaves similarly to x86
> gear. At least, that was my experience with a few of the ARM systems
> I've looked at over the years and the discussions I've had with
> Lenaro's Engineering group.
>
> -Julia
>
> [0]: https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.raspberrypi.org%2Fdocumentation%2Fhardware%2Fraspberrypi%2Fbootmodes%2Fnet.md&amp;data=04%7C01%7CKevin.Fox%40pnnl.gov%7Cb1a131904f2f4b2bb50408d8b19485c6%7Cd6faa5f90ae240338c0130048a38deeb%7C0%7C0%7C637454598746614732%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=ZCzUhAirpM7h6%2BS4%2F6DdD9iddJuZhNcyJwzdo59DIKA%3D&amp;reserved=0
> [1]: https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.raspberrypi.org%2Fdocumentation%2Fhardware%2Fraspberrypi%2Fbcm2711_bootloader_config.md&amp;data=04%7C01%7CKevin.Fox%40pnnl.gov%7Cb1a131904f2f4b2bb50408d8b19485c6%7Cd6faa5f90ae240338c0130048a38deeb%7C0%7C0%7C637454598746624684%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=mjaXiCXWtjBvU5bFpjM%2BcaG%2BElHSdRvftL%2BbjHy6jPM%3D&amp;reserved=0
>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 7:46 AM Zane Bitter <zbi...@redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 31/12/20 1:46 pm, kfox...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Anyone try to get metal3 running on a stack of Raspberry PI's yet?
> > > Cheap/Easy to build a quick physical test cluster to play with if its
> > > possible.
> >
> > You'd need some sort of BMC (presumably another Pi) to control power and
> > boot, and it would have to speak some protocol already serviced by an
> > Ironic driver (hopefully Redfish at this point). I don't know that
> > anything like this already exists, as much as I would like to have one
> > under my desk.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Zane.
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metal3 Development List" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to metal3-dev+...@googlegroups.com.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fd%2Fmsgid%2Fmetal3-dev%2F8bfc02ab-3891-a2cd-cfaa-f471aec8a720%2540redhat.com&amp;data=04%7C01%7CKevin.Fox%40pnnl.gov%7Cb1a131904f2f4b2bb50408d8b19485c6%7Cd6faa5f90ae240338c0130048a38deeb%7C0%7C0%7C637454598746624684%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=vvkkNE23yqMfPaqzY6gsKsRlYlMMKv6f5aZNSWKChiI%3D&amp;reserved=0.
>
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Charles Sibbald

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Jan 6, 2021, 10:03:06 AM1/6/21
to Julia Kreger, Fox, Kevin M, Zane Bitter, Metal3 Development List
So I have questions.

1. Pi’s don’t have redfish or any fancy BMC
2. There is no power control on Pi’s

I ask these questions, how ever I have a design that obviates the requirement for all this.

Kind Regards

Chartles


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