Design: Setting a unique hostname to the BMC machine on first boot

[Alexander A. Filippov]

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 11:46:58AM +0300, Alexander A. Filippov wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 01:05:36PM +0530, Asmitha Karunanithi wrote:
> > Hi Team,
> > 
> > I have been facing a problem and the details of which is mentioned below.
> > 
> > Problem Description:
> > In OpenBMC, the hostname discovery is done by the avahi Dbus service at the
> > startup. In a network where there are multiple OpenBMC machines, avahi keeps
> > getting the hostname conflict and the service name conflict. Hence, the
> > problem is to find a solution that resolves these conflicts.
> > 
> > Background and References:
> > The detailed issue regarding the hostname and service name conflicts is
> > described in the following links.
> > https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/issues/1741.
> > https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/avahi/2018-January/002492.html
> > https://github.com/lathiat/avahi/issues/117
> > 
> > Requirements:
> > None.
> > 
> > Proposed Design:
> > To solve this, we are proposing a service which assigns a unique hostname to
> > the BMC and runs on the very first boot. one of the ways to generate the
> > unique
> > hostname is to append the machine UUID to the existing default hostname.
> 
> We have already done it for our hardware, but we used the BMC's Serial Number
> instead of UUID.
> 
> This service is very similar to meta-opepower/recipes-phosphor/network/first-boot-set-mac
> 
> How it works:
> - openpower-vpd-parser read content of EEPROM VPD and fill corresponded fields
>   in the inventory.
> - the service reads serial number via DBus  and append it to the hostname if
>   it has default value.

I've posted our solution to 
https://gerrit.openbmc-project.xyz/c/openbmc/meta-openpower/+/21808

> 
> > 
> > Alternatives Considered:
> > None.
> > 
> > Impacts:
> > None.
> > 
> > Testing:
> > None.
> > 
> > If you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know.
> > -- 
> > Thanks & Regards,
> > Asmitha Karunanithi
> 
> --
> Regards,
> Alexander Filippov
> Software Engineer, YADRO