Intel Chipsets with vPro/Intel AMT, paired with a Core i5/i7 or Xeon with integrated
graphics, have a feature called Remote KVM.
To activate it, press Ctrl-P at the BIOS - this brings you to the MEBx
menu, set a password (minimum 8 characters, mixed case, numbers and
special characters are enforced - try to avoid #@$% - use star or exclamation), configure the
network settings (DHCP, or static - it can even match the OS’s IP address!),
enable Remote KVM and disable User Opt-In.
in order to set it up, download the Intel AMT SDK from
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/download-the-latest-intel-amt-software-development-kit-sdk/
extract the ZIP and open
./Windows/Intel_AMT/Bin/KVM/KVMControlApplication.exe. (I had to
install .net 2.0 in my wine in order to be able to run it.)
There, you can enable KVM by clicking "Edit Machine Settings" as seen in the following screenshot:
KVM Status can either be set to
-“redirection ports” (meaning it will only be accessible to clients
that specifically support Intel AMT, such as RealVNC Viewer Plus or
Intel’s KVM Console, the former of which costs $100, the later
constantly overlays a RealVNC logo on the screen), or to
-“default port” (meaning it will be accessible on TCP port 5900 with
any VNC client), or to
-“all ports” (which is the combination of both).
If you enable VNC access, you will also need to set an RFB Password. Warning, the password gets truncated at 8 characters but at the same time has the security requirements identical to the general
AMT password (Capital, small letter, number and special-character -
WARNING: underscore is not special char, @$%&| are NOT allowed,
choose star or exclamation to play safe).
If you disabled User Opt-In in the MEBx menu, you can disable it
here as well.
Now you can use almost any VNC client you like (KRDC,
Real, Ultra, and Tight VNC works fine, while TigerVNC seems to be
unable to auth, and Apple Remote Desktop appears to cause the VNC
server to freeze - it's Apple crap, what do you expect?).
Two things worth mentioning:
1: the initial BIOS splash
screen is not visible during a KVM connection (not even on a
directly-attached screen), so to get to the BIOS, you needed to blindly
hit the F10.
2: it is not possible to enter the MEBx menu during a KVM
connection (probably for security reasons), if you hit the
corresponding CTRL+P key, it immediately exits and continues normal
boot; if you establish a KVM connection while already in MEBx, you
get disconnected immediately.
If you’re building a home server, you should
definitely consider getting system with Intel vPro/AMT 6.0 or later, you get ILO-like remote management capabilities for free.
Oh yeah,
http://your_machine:16992 gives you access to logs, power
control, network setup, users, exactly the same way ILO does!
And of course the OS has no idea something is running below him,
there is no CPU load, on the host netstat shows no other connections except my
ssh:
tcp 0 0 192.168.aaa.xxx:22
192.168.aaa.yyy:49506 ESTABLISHED 2314/sshd
while from my workstation we can see a second connection to the VNC
port 5900:
tcp 0 0 192.168.aaa.yyy:49506
192.168.aaa.xxx:22 ESTABLISHED 13362/ssh
tcp 0 0 192.168.aaa.yyy:43311
192.168.aaa.xxx:5900 ESTABLISHED 29457/krdc
Note the black blinking monitors in the upper-right corner - that screams "AMT":
