OpenBMC is a Linux distribution for management controllers used in devices such as servers, top of rack switches or RAID appliances. It uses Yocto, OpenEmbedded, systemd, and D-Bus to allow easy customization for your platform.
See the Yocto documentation for the latest requirements
sudo apt install git python3-distutils gcc g++ make file wget \
gawk diffstat bzip2 cpio chrpath zstd lz4 bzip2sudo dnf install git python3 gcc g++ gawk which bzip2 chrpath cpio \
hostname file diffutils diffstat lz4 wget zstd rpcgen patchgit clone https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc
cd openbmcAny build requires an environment set up according to your hardware target.
There is a special script in the root of this repository that can be used to
configure the environment as needed. The script is called setup and takes the
name of your hardware target as an argument.
The script needs to be sourced while in the top directory of the OpenBMC repository clone, and, if run without arguments, will display the list of supported hardware targets, see the following example:
$ . setup <machine> [build_dir]
Target machine must be specified. Use one of:
bletchley mori s8036
dl360poc mtjade swift
e3c246d4i mtmitchell tatlin-archive-x86
ethanolx nicole tiogapass
evb-ast2500 olympus-nuvoton transformers
evb-ast2600 on5263m5 vegman-n110
evb-npcm750 p10bmc vegman-rx20
f0b palmetto vegman-sx20
fp5280g2 qcom-dc-scm-v1 witherspoon
g220a quanta-q71l witherspoon-tacoma
gbs romed8hm3 x11spi
greatlakes romulus yosemitev2
gsj s2600wf zaius
kudo s6q
lannister s7106
Once you know the target (e.g. romulus), source the setup script as follows:
. setup romulusbitbake obmc-phosphor-imageAdditional details can be found in the docs repository.
The OpenBMC community maintains a set of tutorials new users can go through to get up to speed on OpenBMC development out here
Commits submitted by members of the OpenBMC GitHub community are compiled and
tested via our Jenkins server. Commits are run
through two levels of testing. At the repository level the makefile make check
directive is run. At the system level, the commit is built into a firmware image
and run with an arm-softmmu QEMU model against a barrage of
CI tests.
Commits submitted by non-members do not automatically proceed through CI testing. After visual inspection of the commit, a CI run can be manually performed by the reviewer.
Automated testing against the QEMU model along with supported systems are performed. The OpenBMC project uses the Robot Framework for all automation. Our complete test repository can be found here.
Support of additional hardware and software packages is always welcome. Please follow the contributing guidelines when making a submission. It is expected that contributions contain test cases.
Issues are managed on GitHub. It is recommended you search through the issues before opening a new one.
First, please do a search on the internet. There's a good chance your question has already been asked.
For general questions, please use the openbmc tag on Stack Overflow. Please review the discussion on Stack Overflow licensing before posting any code.
For technical discussions, please see contact info below for Discord and mailing list information. Please don't file an issue to ask a question. You'll get faster results by using the mailing list or Discord.
This is a common question, particularly regarding boards from popular COTS
(commercial off-the-shelf) vendors such as Supermicro and ASRock. You can see
the list of supported boards by running . setup (with no further arguments) in
the root of the OpenBMC source tree. Most of the platforms supported by OpenBMC
are specialized servers operated by companies running large datacenters, but
some more generic COTS servers are supported to varying degrees.
If your motherboard is not listed in the output of . setup it is not currently
supported. Porting OpenBMC to a new platform is a non-trivial undertaking,
ideally done with the assistance of schematics and other documentation from the
manufacturer (it is not completely infeasible to take on a porting effort
without documentation via reverse engineering, but it is considerably more
difficult, and probably involves a greater risk of hardware damage).
However, even if your motherboard is among those listed in the output of
. setup, there are two significant caveats to bear in mind. First, not all
ports are equally mature -- some platforms are better supported than others, and
functionality on some "supported" boards may be fairly limited. Second, support
for a motherboard is not the same as support for a complete system -- in
particular, fan control is critically dependent on not just the motherboard but
also the fans connected to it and the chassis that the board and fans are housed
in, both of which can vary dramatically between systems using the same board
model. So while you may be able to compile and install an OpenBMC build on your
system and get some basic functionality, rough edges (such as your cooling fans
running continuously at full throttle) are likely.
- Host management: Power, Cooling, LEDs, Inventory, Events, Watchdog
- Full IPMI 2.0 Compliance with DCMI
- Code Update Support for multiple BMC/BIOS images
- Web-based user interface
- REST interfaces
- D-Bus based interfaces
- SSH based SOL
- Remote KVM
- Hardware Simulation
- Automated Testing
- User management
- Virtual media
- OpenCompute Redfish Compliance
- Verified Boot
- OpenBMC performance monitoring
Dive deeper into OpenBMC by opening the docs repository.
The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) guides the project. Members are:
- Roxanne Clarke, IBM
- Nancy Yuen, Google
- Patrick Williams, Meta
- Terry Duncan, Intel
- Sagar Dharia, Microsoft
- Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud, Arm