OpenBMC for ADLINK Ampere Altra systems is now available

Rebecca Cran
3/5/24, 2:13 PM

I released v1.0 of the port of OpenBMC to ADLINK Ampere Altra systems yesterday.

The release along with upgrade instructions can be found at https://github.com/bcran/openbmc/releases/tag/v1.0-bexcran

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a path to switch from MegaRAC to OpenBMC. So if anyone would like to run OpenBMC instead of the MegaRAC firmware that comes with the systems, please contact me and I can send you replacement SPI-NOR EEPROMs.

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Will 💜
3/6/24, 2:11 AM

This is really great to see, nice work!

I happen to have a 128MiB SPI flash chip kicking around (MT25QL01GBBB8ESF-0SIT), but I don't know what part ships with the AADK. Are there any compatibility concerns to know about?

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Rebecca Cran
3/6/24, 2:18 AM

@Will 💜 I haven't come across any compatibility problems, but I have only tried other Macronix chips (64MB and 128MB).

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Alex Wang Staff member
3/8/24, 6:36 AM

Hi Will,

the SPI flash chip at AADK is MX25L25645GMI-08G

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PK

Philipp Krause
1/17/25, 10:46 AM

I've seen that the old repository linked above is gone. Is https://github.com/bexcran/openbmc the new one?

Any news on being able to upgrade from MegaRAC to OpenBMC without replacing the flash chip?

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Rebecca Cran
1/17/25, 3:15 PM

Yes, https://github.com/bexcran/openbmc is the new location.

One tool which can be used to replace MegaRAC with OpenBMC `embedded_reflash` from https://github.com/9elements/embedded_reflash .

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PK

Philipp Krause
3/24/26, 11:50 AM

The README at github mentions that the goal is to upstream the work. Any news on that?

P.S.: I just installed OpenBMC using your instruction at https://wiki.bsdio.com/en/openbmc-on-adlink-ampere-altra

Since then, I did try to use the OpenBMC web interface to:

* Upgrade to latest firmnware from (failed¹)

* Power on server (failed²)

* Change BMC hostname (worked)

* Change root password (failed³)

* Reboot BMC (worked)

* Power off server (worked)

¹ I tried to upgrade to the latest release at https://github.com/bexcran/openbmc/releases, using the OpenBMC web interface, but get "Error: Error starting firmware update".

² It had no effect; so I used the button on the chassis instead.

³ I got "Error: The value 'null' for the property Password is of a different format than the property can accept."

P.S.: On further attemps, power on is working now.

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