TechnoVagabond: Deep Learning HOWTO with IBM Minsky Power8 server, Ubuntu 16.04, Caffe-NV and Kitti (Part 2)

Minsky server has some differences when you compare with a regular one. By large the most time consuming one (if you do not know it) is the BMC port and how to connect to it.

Here is the explanation.

Interfaces in Minsky

IBM Minsky server (model 8335-GTB) has 3 NICs (Ethernet interfaces), however it only has two physical ports.

Watching the back of the server you will find both Ports (Port0 and Port1)

Port 1 is a common port that can be configured as a regular NIC in the OS.

Port 0 is a physical port that has two internal NICs, it shows 2 different MAC addresses to the network.

The first MAC address is from a NIC that can be used in the OS as another regular eth adapters.
The second MAC is from the BMC interface. It is configured as DHCP by default.

Implementing the connection

You can use whatever solution you prefer to connect, just checking the interface (see the first commands of our solution) for the acquired IP address but as we do not have DHCP server we will configure a static IP address in the same range as the NIC1, forgetting about the NIC0 interface.

From Ubuntu CLI

Install the necessary packages in the host OS.

root@minsky:/etc/network# apt install ipmitool

Then we have to install the ipmi driver

root@minsky:/etc/network# modprobe ipmi_devintf

Now we will check the actual configuration

root@minsky:/etc/network# ipmitool lan print 1

Set in Progress : Set Complete

Auth Type Support : MD5

Auth Type Enable : Callback : MD5

: User : MD5

: Operator : MD5

: Admin : MD5

: OEM : MD5

IP Address Source : DHCP Address

IP Address : 0.0.0.0

Subnet Mask : 0.0.0.0

MAC Address : 70:e2:84:14:25:fd

SNMP Community String : AMI

IP Header : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10

BMC ARP Control : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled

Gratituous ARP Intrvl : 0.0 seconds

Default Gateway IP : 0.0.0.0

Default Gateway MAC : 00:00:00:00:00:00

Backup Gateway IP : 0.0.0.0

Backup Gateway MAC : 00:00:00:00:00:00

802.1q VLAN ID : Disabled

802.1q VLAN Priority : 0

RMCP+ Cipher Suites : 0,1,2,3,6,7,8,11,12,15,16,17

Cipher Suite Priv Max : caaaaaaaaaaaXXX

: X=Cipher Suite Unused

: c=CALLBACK

: u=USER

: o=OPERATOR

: a=ADMIN

: O=OEM

Bad Password Threshold : 0

Invalid password disable: no

Attempt Count Reset Int.: 0

User Lockout Interval : 0

root@minsky:/etc/network#

Check the current IP address configuration

root@minsky:/etc/network# ip a

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1

link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo