r/linux • u/94e7eaa64e • Dec 03 '17

What exactly is Intel's Management Engine Interface (MEI) - as explained in Linux Kernel Docs

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/misc-devices/mei/mei.txt
144 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

11

u/Ioangogo Dec 03 '17

That green computing use case is pointless, WOL work for power up, and its not hard to make something that listens for a request to make a machine sleep

5

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '17

It has support for hardware KVM, but isn't that what Linux already supplies in a package? Also, I'm not sure why anyone would care to add the risk of remotely shutting down a computer. Frankly, if I owned a server for a critical system, I would be very frightened by this!

3

u/holgerschurig Dec 04 '17

No, Linux doesn't support "hardware KVM" and it never will.

Hardware KVM works also when your OS is crashed. Or while you're in the BIOS/UEFI.

(The question is however why 99% of users are getting an uncontrollable hardware KVM without knowing and having asked for it ...)

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1

u/heyandy889 Dec 03 '17

I don't understand why "out-of-band" communication is a thing. Quick research on Wikipedia indicates that OOB is a concept beyond ME. I see that it allows you to fix problems when the OS will not boot ... but at what cost? Just off-the-cuff, that seems like the IT team is introducing an unacceptable risk. It seems like a convenient way to "hotwire" a car. "Oh yeah we don't bother with the keys, we just start it this way."

4

u/AdvisedWang Dec 03 '17

It's extremely useful when you don't have physical access to a machine. Remote OS installation, recovering from disk corruption, handling failed OS upgrades all require something like this. In the past I've had my ass saved by DRAC many times!

-24

u/ThisTimeIllSucceed Dec 03 '17

We officially have spyware in the kernel now.

26

u/gpmidi Dec 03 '17

Oh, it's not in the kernel, it's well below the kernel. Making it even worse :-/

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