Intel MEI module for AMT/vPro

[hadleyrich]

It appears it the Intel MEI module may have been available here?

xcp/data/8.2/comparison-CH8.1-CH8.2.txt

Line 365 in b50d6a6

removed /lib/modules/4.19.0+1/kernel/drivers/misc/mei

I can't find any other references but I don't know the build system so perhaps I'm missing something.

Is this not supported for a reason or would it be possible to build the module?

[stormi]

It was likely removed by XenServer packagers. I don't know why.

What is this module useful for?

[hadleyrich]

It was likely removed by XenServer packagers. I don't know why.

What is this module useful for?

Thanks for the follow up :)

It's Intel's built in IPMI / Out of Band Management, which is provided by some of their CPU/Chipsets/NICs. I believe it's (mostly?) consumer-grade which is possibly not XCP-ng's main target, but does appear on some small business gear. It would be useful to me (and perhaps others I assume) if it's not excluded for a particular reason.

Marketing blurb excerpt:

[stormi]

I finally got to the deep part of my TODO list where I had a reference to this issue. I'll create an internal card for our kernel maintainers to decide whether they want to enable this. At first sight, it looks like a benign change that could be done, but I'll let them judge.

[stormi]

Hi! So we had a look at the kernel module, and we're not really confident adding it back to all existing production systems by default. We'll keep this issue open as a feature requests, to potentially gather input from other users who might have the same need.

If not for a critical production system, you could build the module using https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp-ng-build-env and add it to your host(s), but that obviously falls outside supported scenarios.

Kernel sources: https://github.com/xcp-ng-rpms/kernel (branch 8.2, or master for 8.3).