✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8

hey wanna see somethng cursed

one part of this NIC is downloading UEFI boot options from another part of this NIC over HTTP. (well, failing to do it for some reason)

you're welcome

Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark oh no. oh no that implies multiple fucking processors
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya yes it has two linuxes on it
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark why. what. what. what
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya second is AST2600
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark what the fuuuuck, that's a wholeass BMC
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya yup
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya with 1 GB of RAM (256 MB of it is full of some crap)
Show threadAlexBApr 8
@whitequark @freya would not be surprised if that was (reserved for) the (host's) video framebuffer
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@vmp_ @whitequark yep, you would be exactly correct, the AST2600 is configured to prevent to be a Matrox MGA-G200 VGA chipset
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8

@freya @vmp_ what

no that's not the case at all. what the hell are you talking about

Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark @vmp_ the Aspeed AST2600 uses a hunk of ram to be a VGA chipset because it's used as a BMC in servers, right?
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya @vmp_ first, you need barely any RAM for a Matrox framebuffer (the Matrox card you're talking about came with eight megabytes of it. today you could put that in on-die SRAM if you wanted). second, i'm talking about Linux-accessible RAM, on the Linux kernel, that I have root on
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark @vmp_ nvm ok I misunderstood
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya @vmp_ also this thing doesn't connect the AST2600 over PCIe, it has a USB link to th main SoC
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@whitequark @vmp_ oh what the fuck? what is the AST2600 even doing then?
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8
@freya @vmp_ it lets you connect to the serial console of the main SoC. you can use minicom to configure the firmware. it does something funny with escape sequences so all of that barely works
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 8

@freya @vmp_ there's not enough storage to store one "bf-bundle" (installation media) on the BMC and bfb-install can only install from a file so i don't think you could reinstall the main SoC from it

maybe if you mounted it via nfs...?

Show threadAlexBApr 8
@whitequark @freya (also from x86 experience) the BMC can emulate USB storage forwarded from somewhere else, e.g. from a human's web browser over websockets
Show threadAlexBApr 8
@whitequark @freya that would be good BMC firmware. Bad firmware would make you host ISO images on a samba server
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩Apr 8
@vmp_ @whitequark my R710 did this
Show threadHoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!Apr 8

@freya @vmp_ @whitequark Yeah I was going to say, last time I had to deal with BMCs it was either cursed proprietary Java clients or getting it to stream an ISO from SMB using barely documented commands.

I think an HP something once was able to do HTTP? But not very well...

Show threadJulianCalabyApr 8
@lina @freya @vmp_ @whitequark I believe my HP server's BMC streams ISOs over web sockets or something. It can somehow use a local file as a virtual CD without uploading it. I believe the connection gets severed when the licensing detects that the server you're bootstrapping has booted and kicks you out of the KVM.
Show threadHoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!
@juliancalaby @freya @vmp_ @whitequark Yeah the ones with HTML5 clients can usually do that. It's wacky but it usually works.
Apr 8 at 8:09amWeb