Round Trip with MCTP over PCC

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The future Ampere System-on-a-chip that is the basis for my work has a couple of processors that are for providing system wide services, not for end users to run things on directly. One of these is called the Management Processor, or Mpro. We have to talk to one of these services from the operating system using the Management Control Transport Protocol, or MCTP, over a Platform Communication Channel (PCC).

I just sent ran a user-land program that sends a message via a socket into the operating system, via PCC, to the MPro, and got a response back.

It took a while for it to sink in. And then I raised my hands in the air and proclaimed in my Best Dr. Frankenstein voice,

“It’s Alive!”

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Building a Fedora Based Linux Kernel

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We have a few different ways we build a Kernel for internal consumption. One is very minimal, to be used when space is at a premium. Another is very closely based on the Fedora configuration to be used as a replacement Kernel for a Fedora install. While we do provide our team with RPMs to install, development often requires building from source. I’ve done this (and forgotten steps) enough times to want to have a quick reference. The following should work on a recent Fedora install.

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Querying the PCCT in Python

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The Platform Communication Channel Table contains information used to send messages in a shared memory buffer between the Operating System and other subsystems on the platform. Typically, the Channel has an interrupt defined that is used to tell the other subsystem that there is new data available.

Recently, I’ve been working with a couple entries that are of a newer type. In addition to the shared memory region and the interrupt values, the PCCT entries for type 3 and type 4 channels also have a series of registers. Where before the PCCT entries were normalized, now they are hierarchical. This makes them a little harder to scan with the human eye to confirm that the proper values have been recorded and read.

To simplify development, I build a simple script.

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Perdido

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Written By Adam Young.

This is a short story I wrote my Sophomore year at West Point. It was originally published in “The Circle in the Spiral” the one and only edition of the West Point literary magazine, published in early 1991. Apologies for in anachronisms. More on that later

Perdido
Title in the Original publishing
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