Another amusing bug

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 22:43 +0100
Martin Airs <martin at airs.me.uk> wrote:
> On Sunday 25 Aug 2013 13:20:05 Tom Horsley wrote:
> > Meanwhile, I still can't find out what the heck the
> > mei module is actually good for.
> 
> http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/misc-devices/mei/
> 
> Some examples of Intel AMT usage are:
[snip list of technobabble]
> that might tell us something useful, tho quite what I'm not sure

As far as I understood, it is all about being able to control/adjust the
machine's bios remotely.

Most probably it is designed to work through ethernet or modem or
whatever. It apparently features an internal-to-bios database with all
sorts of stuff that can be configured or set up from within the bios
screen itself, and in addition the access rights and security policies
for remote access. And probably more.

I can imagine this technology being useful if the OS would fail to boot
and you do not have physical access to the box. Or it may be convenient
for setting up headless machines, should you need to access their bios
and don't have a keyboard and monitor at hand.

As for the kernel module, my guess is that it probably provides a way to
access this bios-database from withih Linux, and provide a handle for
the user to read or modify it.

HTH, :-)
Marko