Intel AMT Serial Over LAN

Quick post about what I needed to do to get Serial Over Lan (SOL) working on an HP z420 workstation. This machine has a Xeon processor. Sincce there's no integrated graphics, the KVM capaability of Intel vPro/AMT doesn't work. Modify /etc/default/grub and add the following two lines at the end fo the file.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty0 console=ttyS4,115200n8"
GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --speed=115200 --port=0xe060 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1"

Create the file /etc/systemd/system/serial-getty@ttyS4.service with the following contents.

#  This file is part of systemd.
#
#  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
#  under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.

[Unit]
Description=Serial Getty on %I
Documentation=man:agetty(8) man:systemd-getty-generator(8)
Documentation=http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/serial-console.html
BindsTo=dev-%i.device
After=dev-%i.device systemd-user-sessions.service plymouth-quit-wait.service
After=rc-local.service

# If additional gettys are spawned during boot then we should make
# sure that this is synchronized before getty.target, even though
# getty.target didn't actually pull it in.
Before=getty.target
IgnoreOnIsolate=yes

[Service]
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --keep-baud 115200 %I vt100-nav 
Type=idle
Restart=always
UtmpIdentifier=%I
TTYPath=/dev/%I
TTYReset=yes
TTYVHangup=yes
KillMode=process
IgnoreSIGPIPE=no
SendSIGHUP=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=getty.target

Enable the ttyS4 getty in systemctl with command below.

systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyS4.service

Reboot your machine. You should be able to use SOl via the following command. There will be a prompt for the AMT password. This was set in your BIOS.

amtterm host or ip address

Check the status of the getty

systemctl status serial-getty@ttyS4.service

Opensource Software Waivers and the U.S. Government

Opensource software waivers are a joke. It may take many months or even a year or more to get the software approved. It may only be for a specific version of the software as well. So, when you do get the software approved you may not be able to use the latest with whatever security patches that have been approved. If anything, the process and bureaucracy are making the their organizations more insecure.