Control Your PC From a Distance - IPMI & Remote Management!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,708 words · ~8 min read
0:00
we all know the computer Basics you want to turn your computer on you press this
0:04
button on the front you want to see what the computer's doing you look at the
0:08
monitor you want to reset the computer if it crashes you press this other
0:12
button on the front but do you know how to do all of
0:16
those things if you're a thousand miles away oh I know I know okay well good for
0:22
you smarty pants here's a gold star for everyone else stay
0:28
tuned
0:36
tunnel bear is the easy to use VPN service that lets you use the web as
0:40
though you're in one of 20 different countries learn more and try tunnel bear
0:44
for free at the link in the video
0:48
description so there are a huge number of reasons that you might want to be
0:52
able to access or control your computer from far away it ranges from totally
0:56
mainstream stuff like needing to grab a file off your your desktop for the
1:00
homework assignment you were planning to print at school before handing it in
1:05
which yeah whatever I think you still understood my point to Enthusiast stuff
1:10
like realizing you want to share all those birthday pictures you took of
1:14
little Joseph while you're visiting an Josephine and your FTP is down to it
1:19
administrator stuff like realizing that someone put Windows on one of your
1:23
servers and you need to throttle everyone else in the building's internet
1:27
connection so not a moment is wasted while you download your faor Linux drro
1:30
mounted as virtual media install it and restore order to the universe so let's
1:36
start with more basic Solutions and work our way up to the cooler but regrettably
1:41
more expensive ones the first one shouldn't cost a dime because if you
1:45
already bought a decent PC in the last 10 years there's a very good chance that
1:50
it has a feature called wake on land so
1:53
the way wake on land works is as long as
1:56
the computer is plugged into wall power even if it's in a shut down state it
2:02
actually consumes a little bit of electricity Illuminating power indicator
2:06
LEDs on your motherboard or power supply and even enabling functionality like
2:11
charging plugged in phones or tablets over special USB ports and you guessed
2:16
it keeping your network card Juiced up enough that it can wait for what's
2:21
called a magic packet and bring the whole computer to life wake on land can
2:26
be configured a handful of ways you can set it up in the ufi or the BIOS of your
2:31
motherboard or you can actually do it from within the network card
2:35
configuration panel in most modern operating systems you can even specify
2:40
if you want a magic packet to only work in sleep versus when the machine is
2:46
fully powered down Wake On L has some limitations though it requires either a
2:51
separate machine that you can remote into using something like team viewer to
2:55
use a utility to send a magic packet or
2:58
a VPN or some firewall and routing rules
3:01
to be configured for it to work from outside of the local network on top of
3:07
that wake on land is not capable of shutting down the computer that needs to
3:13
be done through your operating system so wake on land does nothing to help you if
3:17
the system hangs and is stuck in an unresponsive state or fails to boot for
3:22
one reason or another which leads us then into some janky solutions to this
3:26
problem covering a bit of a range in terms of difficulty and expense first up
3:32
is a solution I actually really like this is a Bellin weimo you may remember
3:37
it from the Channel Super Fun prank where burkel and I made the LMG staff
3:40
believe they had triggered the building alarm you're going to want to check that out here this one is relatively cheap
3:46
and I already had it lying around but any smart home power socket that can be
3:51
remotely switched on and off with an app will work for this so these things are
3:55
intended for something like a bedside lamp but by configuring the comp
3:59
computer to turn the machine on after AC power loss and every non-lt that I've
4:04
encountered has this option buried somewhere within the BIOS you can do a
4:09
hard shutdown using the weimo by just cutting power to it and then turn it
4:14
back on if for whatever reason it fails to boot and the Machine should try to
4:18
boot again well what if I don't want to spend $50 on a clever wall socket good
4:23
question the way a PC powers on and off
4:26
is simply by bridging two contacts on the motherboard power switch allowing
4:30
electricity to flow so it's a short press to power on and to Safe power off
4:36
and a long press for about 5 seconds for a hard forced shutdown so get creative
4:42
here's a great thread on the Raspberry Pi forums that covers some of the ways
4:45
folks have used arduinos and raspberry pies to wire up the power on andof
4:51
switches for their remote PCS and actually Luke even told me once about a
4:55
solution that he created for someone who didn't want to spend a dime or an any
4:59
time but who happened to have a spare laptop with an external 5 and 1/4 in
5:05
optical drive where he put the optical drive next to the server's power switch
5:10
so he could remote into the laptop and eject the dis tray causing it to bump
5:15
the power switch not an ideal solution but definitely creative and the sky is
5:19
pretty much the limit here but none of that stuff allows for the computer to be
5:23
fully managed in the same way that you could if you were sitting in front of it
5:27
and that is where IPM comes in this
5:31
super micro motherboard actually a super sexy soon to be relased microatx model
5:36
with support for up to 22 core processors four sticks of quad Channel
5:40
memory and dual onboard 10 GB network cards the x10
5:45
srmf comes with a dedicated additional
5:48
Network Port that is just for ipmi or
5:52
intelligent platform management interface you assign it a static IP
5:56
within the BIOS then you can use any computer on the same network to navigate
6:00
to that IP log in and assuming you've got your Java up toate and your security
6:05
settings all configured you'll be looking at a whole wealth of freaking
6:10
cool tools and functionalities you can see the system
6:14
Hardware you can monitor server Health to see if your CPU is running cool
6:18
enough and if it's not you can check if your fans are still spinning or you can
6:22
set up a different fan curve you can do event logs you can mount virtual discs
6:26
and drives you can of course power on or
6:29
off the computer in any way you please and you can even do Advanced things like
6:34
updating the BIOS or the IPI firmware and adjusting bio settings using the
6:39
real-time view of the VGA output that's on the back of the board the problem is
6:44
that sick features like a real-time view of exactly what the machine is
6:48
outputting often require special Hardware aside from just that Network
6:53
Port to be built into the motherboard and while motherboards with add-on ipmi
6:58
modules ASUS has a number of them available do exist they mostly come with
7:06
ipmi or without it there are kvms that
7:10
are remotely manageable but they are much more expensive than investing in
7:14
ipmi capable Hardware in the first place and they won't support everything that
7:19
an ipmi board can do now to be clear
7:22
ipmi is not perfect and poses some
7:25
serious security risks I mean remember when someone has physical access to your
7:29
machine it's not your machine anymore
7:32
but it's the king when it comes to Remote Management and it saved me quite
7:36
a few late night trips to the office crunchy roll is the site created by
7:42
anime fans for anime fans they offer the
7:45
most current episodes of new shows straight from Japan and they have a huge
7:49
collection of the most popular anime series The featured content for spring
7:54
of this year is TwinStar exorcists Ace Attorney rezero and K neor of course
8:01
they've got like way more than that and all the content on their site is
8:06
professionally subtitled so all you've got to do is head over to
8:09
crunchyroll.com Linus which is linked in the video description to sign up for a
8:14
free 30day trial of crunchy roll premium
8:17
30 days our link gives you a whole month
8:21
of free anime completely ad free and if
8:24
you enjoy the many benefits of Premium like 1080p streaming getting new
8:27
episodes of shows straight from Japan within an hour of their Premiere with
8:31
subtitles and being able to stream anywhere anytime to a variety of devices
8:36
like your phone tablet or game console you can continue your premium membership
8:39
to Crunchyroll for only seven bucks a month so head over to crunchyroll.com
8:44
Linus and check them out so thanks for
8:47
watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome
8:51
get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by
8:54
using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a
8:57
cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our
9:00
community Forum which by the way you can go to it's linked in the video description ask your questions all that
9:05
kind of stuff now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering
9:08
hm what should I watch next maybe check out this video over on Channel Super Fun
9:11
our tertiary Channel just click the little eye up there and go check it out
9:15
I guarantee it'll be fun maybe even super
9:19
fun