An IPMI Request Visualization Tool

[Vijay Khemka]

On 5/21/20, 9:45 AM, "openbmc on behalf of Sui Chen" <openbmc-bounces+vijaykhemka=fb.com at lists.ozlabs.org on behalf of suichen6 at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hello Andrew and Patrick,
    
    Thanks for your interest! I'm also using dbus-pcap to track certain
    issues on the BMC recently, and would like to add support for all DBus
    messages to the visualization tool, making it somewhat resemble a GUI
    version of dbus-pcap.
    The goal would be to be able to use this tool to investigate both DBus
    and IPMI. The way I plan to use it would be more similar to how I use
    GPUView (full-system timeline rather than inspecting individual
    packets)
    
    If you ask how this user interface might differ from the already
    existing dbus visualizers such as bustle, my answer would be: it will
    present information in a way that's more relevant to the BMC, putting
    a bit more focus on BMC-specific DBus messages, such as HWMon and
    RedFish DBus messages, to present information in a high signal-noise
    ratio way.
    
    If this makes sense to you, can I know what might be a better way to proceed:
    1) Create a change in openbmc-tools? or,
    2) Create a new repository under openbmc? or
    3) Create a personal/organization-managed repository and create a pull request?

You should be able to add it under openbmc-tools directly rather than creating 
a new repo or creating personal directory.
    
    Thanks,
    Sui
    
    
    On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 6:38 PM Andrew Jeffery <andrew at aj.id.au> wrote:
    >
    >
    >
    > On Thu, 14 May 2020, at 23:27, Patrick Williams wrote:
    > > On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 03:38:47PM -0700, Sui Chen wrote:
    > > > We're working on a GUI tool that allows the user to capture and visualize
    > > > BMC IPMI requests.
    > > >
    > > > The tool accepts 2 kinds of inputs:
    > > >  1) Load a DBus traffic dump file generated by dbus-monitor on the BMC
    > > >  2) Capture IPMI requests on the BMC -- the tool connects to the BMC
    > > > console by launching a program of the the user's choice (example: ssh or
    > > > telnet), then starts "dbus-monitor" on the BMC and checks its outputs for DBus
    > > > calls on the IPMI daemon and then draws the IPMI requests on the canvas
    > > > accordingly.
    > >
    > > > A screenshot is attached to illustrate what it does:
    > > > [image: scrnshot_compressed.png]
    > >
    > > Neat.  I wonder if we can use this to analyse dbus messages with high
    > > amounts of latency (especially once that are infrequently latent) in
    > > order to better target which processes we should move towards async
    > > calls.
    >
    > For what it's worth I have a script for parsing D-Bus pcaps:
    >
    > https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc-tools/tree/master/amboar/obmc-scripts/dbus-pcap
    >
    > It's helped me tracked down unexpected latencies and other weird
    > behaviours in the past.
    >
    > I've just pushed a change adding a README to introduce the capabilities
    > and provide examples of usage and output:
    >
    > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__gerrit.openbmc-2Dproject.xyz_c_openbmc_openbmc-2Dtools_-2B_32583&d=DwIBaQ&c=5VD0RTtNlTh3ycd41b3MUw&r=v9MU0Ki9pWnTXCWwjHPVgpnCR80vXkkcrIaqU7USl5g&m=yvJlaLs3OjdhZWtgqOz5j-3oLG6izLybS-48PNfv-Bo&s=LIuidUUZaTV-K4Uuu79r2C5a4xffwdEd-4Zj-oJjiAo&e= 
    >
    > Cheers,
    >
    > Andrew