Openbmc: Differences between facebook/openbmc and openbmc/openbmc
For openBMC, there seem to be two yocto based projects -
facebook/openbmc
openbmc/openbmc
How similar or how different are these ? Are there any plans to merge the two efforts ? Can the utilities from openbmc/openbmc be used with this openbmc project and vica versa ?
ruchi393
All 10 comments
facebook/openbmc is the original release. openbmc/openbmc appears to be the actively developed fork / continuation of that original project.
madscientist159
on 20 Sep 2016
It's worth noting that the openbmc/openbmc fork has a development team that concentrates on enabling OpenBMC on OpenPOWER machines. However, as a consequence, the team is generally supporting hardware like the AST2400 and AST2500 SoCs, implementing and upstreaming firmware/kernel drivers and infrastructure. Also, part of openbmc/openbmc's role is to be a reference BMC distribution, so contributions for non-OpenPOWER systems are of course welcome!
amboar
on 21 Sep 2016
@ruchi393 -
At this point, facebook/openbmc and openbmc/openbmc are similar in name and concept only.
We [IBM] had been interested in an open-source BMC for the OpenPower community but nothing was available. Facebook released their project and it gained some interest within a few members of the OpenPower community. A little over a year ago, Rackspace committed to an open-source BMC project and collaborated with us to create it. When we started, there was some design decisions Facebook had made that we did not feel was scalable for the scope of what we wanted an open source BMC to do, since their main focus was as an internal project rather than a potential commercial offering, so we decided to create our own proof-of-concept of an open-source BMC. Hence, this project is the result of our collaboration with Rackspace (and others) to create that.
Right now, we are focused heavily on development for a Power9-based commercial offering that will utilize this code base. We are also working closely with developers at Google for another Power9-based system that they and Rackspace will utilize. But, our intention is not to have design aspects that are Power-unique; we fully intend that this code base will be used some day on "other architectures".
We have been working with Facebook off and on to attempt to arrive at some amount of commonality. The first hurdle there will be to have a common Linux and u-boot, which they are working towards, since we have been very active at up-streaming drivers for the AST2400/2500 chips. We hope that as we both get a more mature implementation of our visions we will be able to converge on the best of both implementations, but converging on the userspace applications is a little farther off.
To clarify what was said earlier, openbmc/openbmc is _not_ a fork of facebook/openbmc. We are both working on the same concept, but with entirely different code right now other than that we are both utilizing Yocto Linux as the basis.
williamspatrick
on 21 Sep 2016
Thanks for the details. Few follow on queries. Are there any plans to support
- KVM over IP
- virtual storage
- Web GUI based interface to the BMC
ruchi393
on 21 Sep 2016
- A few people have asked about it but I haven't seen any concrete plans to implement it. The AST2500 certainly has the right hardware to act as a video card and usb hid devices. Device drivers need to be written for those and then a userspace application to provide access over IP. Patches are welcome.
- Similar story to 1
- https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/issues/266
kc8apf
on 21 Sep 2016
- #261
mdmillerii
on 21 Sep 2016
@ruchi393 Thanks for starting this helpful discussion. For future reference and questions, there's a openBMC mailing list and the IRC channel #openbmc
agangidi53
on 21 Sep 2016
@ruchi393 Can this issue be closed?
gtmills
on 21 May 2018
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because no activity has occurred in the last 6 months. It will be closed if no activity occurs in the next 30 days. If this issue should not be closed please add a comment. Thank you for your understanding and contributions.
![stale[bot] picture](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/1724?v=4&s=40)
stale[bot]
on 28 Mar 2019
Not a bug, and we now also have pieces for each of the features in https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/issues/589#issuecomment-248515288
amboar
on 2 Apr 2019
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Most helpful comment
@ruchi393 -
At this point, facebook/openbmc and openbmc/openbmc are similar in name and concept only.
We [IBM] had been interested in an open-source BMC for the OpenPower community but nothing was available. Facebook released their project and it gained some interest within a few members of the OpenPower community. A little over a year ago, Rackspace committed to an open-source BMC project and collaborated with us to create it. When we started, there was some design decisions Facebook had made that we did not feel was scalable for the scope of what we wanted an open source BMC to do, since their main focus was as an internal project rather than a potential commercial offering, so we decided to create our own proof-of-concept of an open-source BMC. Hence, this project is the result of our collaboration with Rackspace (and others) to create that.
Right now, we are focused heavily on development for a Power9-based commercial offering that will utilize this code base. We are also working closely with developers at Google for another Power9-based system that they and Rackspace will utilize. But, our intention is not to have design aspects that are Power-unique; we fully intend that this code base will be used some day on "other architectures".
We have been working with Facebook off and on to attempt to arrive at some amount of commonality. The first hurdle there will be to have a common Linux and u-boot, which they are working towards, since we have been very active at up-streaming drivers for the AST2400/2500 chips. We hope that as we both get a more mature implementation of our visions we will be able to converge on the best of both implementations, but converging on the userspace applications is a little farther off.
To clarify what was said earlier, openbmc/openbmc is _not_ a fork of facebook/openbmc. We are both working on the same concept, but with entirely different code right now other than that we are both utilizing Yocto Linux as the basis.