The HPC Lab needs to use machines that are in pre-production and development stage, so a few quirks may be necessary to get them behaving like standard data centre machines.

Firmware / BIOS

D03/D05

BMC mode with HPM files (last resort)

Vendor firmware is signed and can be updated directly from the BMC web UI.

If you have the hpm file, navigate to System > Update Firmware, upload the hpm file and click "Upgrade".

EBL mode with FD files (deprecated)

If you have D0x.fd files and your current BIOS has an EBL option under Boot Manager, you can go into EBL and:

biosupdate 10.40.0.11 -u anonymous -p xxx -f D05.fd master

You need to download it and put into the local FTP server in Mr-Provisioner.

OS mode with Capsule files (preferred)

Download the Cap files and use fwupdate to update the firmware, but you have to have an OS installed.

root> apt|yum install -y fwupdate

root> fwupdate --info
# this will show an ID like {7978365d-7978-45fd-ad77-b27693cfe85b} and the current version

root> fwupdate --apply {...ID...} D0xFIRMWAREUPDATECAPSULE....Cap
# this will update the firmware

# reboot and try again
root> fwupdate --info
# this will show an ID and the current version, should be newer

BIOS mode with Capsule files (future)

Starting from 18.08, ERP firmware will allow capsule updates straight from the BIOS screen.

Use the latest firmware from releases.linaro.org.

Upstream firmware, based on Linaro's builds, to be found in estuary.org.

Centriq

Amberwings don't come ready to PXE boot automatically.

The network stack needs to be enabled in the BIOS screen, as described here.

ThunderX2

Upgrade the BIOS, as described in their internal documents (not public), using IPMI and the new hpm images.

Operating System

CentOS

AArch64 support in CentOS is done via AltArch. The repository and kernel images are available from their mirror, but that's always the latest release only.

NOTE: Make sure not to use Linaro's overlays with upstream CentOS, or the kernel will be overwritten and broken.

To install CentOS via PXE on Mr-Provisioner, use the following parameters:

Kernel: AltArch vmlinuz
Initrd: AltArch initrd.img
Kickstart: Linaro's mini-install (as a starting point)
Kernel cmdline: earlycon console=ttyAMA0,115200 ip=dhcp text inst.stage2=http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/aarch64/ inst.repo=http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/aarch64/

Note: Use ttyS0 for D03 machines, and ttyAMA0 for all others.

To use the ERP releases, change in the following way:

Kernel/Initrd: from either releases.linaro.org or snapshots.linaro.org
Kernel cmdline
- Replace: inst.stage2 with http://snapshots.linaro.org/96boards/reference-platform/components/centos-installer-staging/${release-build} (or equivalent in release)
- Append: inst.ks=file:/ks.cfg

Debian

To use the Debian ERP releases, just pick a release version from releases.linaro.org, for example, 17.12.

Kernel: arm64's linux
Initrd: arm64's initrd.gz
Preseed: Linaro's mini-install (as a starting point)
Kernel cmdline:earlycon console=ttyAMA0,115200