Getting up and running quickly is one of openUBMC's defining strengths. The chapters ahead walk you through the scenarios you'll most commonly build on top of openUBMC. We recommend following the learning path below as you start your openUBMC journey.
In this guide, you'll learn how to build your own version of the BMC software.
WARNING
Before you begin, be sure to complete everything in Environment Preparation. Starting with a misconfigured environment is the most common reason people get stuck partway through.
Build and Upgrade
openUBMC firmware runs on real server baseboards, so to try out your build you'll package it as an HPM image and flash it onto a device.
Build the HPM Package
The HPM package is openUBMC's firmware upgrade format. Run from the manifest repository, Bingo—openUBMC's all-in-one build tool—automates building the complete HPM image for you.
NOTE
This assumes your manifest repository is at /home/workspace/manifest. If it lives somewhere else, cd to your actual path instead.
cd /home/workspace/manifest
bingo buildOnce you see rootfs_openUBMC.hpm in the manifest/output directory, the full package has built successfully.
Flash the HPM Package
NOTE
This walkthrough uses the web UI. openUBMC also supports upgrading via CLI, Redfish, SNMP, and IPMI—for those methods and their full parameters, see Firmware Upgrade Mechanism and Common Issues.
You'll typically need to ask your lab administrator for access to a physical machine. Connect to it by IP—we'll use 192.168.2.100 as an example here—and sign in with your account credentials.
Once logged in, go to openUBMC Management → Firmware Upgrade from the home page.
Click Firmware Update → Upgrade File, upload the package you just built (manifest/output/rootfs_openUBMC.hpm), and click Start Upgrade.
The upgrade is now complete.
After the upgrade reports success, the device begins rebooting and the web session will drop. Once it reconnects, open openUBMC Management → Version Information (shown below) and compare the active and standby version numbers. If they no longer match, the new firmware took effect and the upgrade succeeded.
Dual-Image Partitions
For reliability, openUBMC keeps two firmware partitions—one active, one standby. An upgrade writes the new firmware to the standby partition and switches to it on reboot, while the other partition keeps the previous version as a fallback. That's exactly why the active and standby versions no longer match after a successful upgrade: one now runs the new firmware, the other still holds the old.
Verify openUBMC Features
From here you can explore openUBMC hands-on: browse the web UI, log in over SSH to work with the CLI, or connect with ipmitool to issue IPMI commands against the device.