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Commander terminal black screen

Leos_P_
Beginner
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I have been using Intel AMT for quite a while but I still have not been able to penetrate beyond just starting the computers remotely. I have several questions (maybe rather lame):

1. People here seem to know a lot about the technology, yet the documentation is scarce. Is there a turorial or documentation - not marketing material or material for developers as I do not intend to program any software

I know of two major tools that Intel promotes

I have been using the former. Only commander tool as the other programs in the bundle have unknown function.

2. Where would I find a proper documentation for Open manageability toolkit?

3. I watched some tutorial videos suggested here. I have no function Agent discovery in the view options of the commander tool. I only have mesh discovery which does nothing.

4. As per those videos pressing ` should do something special, in my case it does not do anything. I still have black terminal no matter what I do. I can only boot to bios. On some clients I can see the windows bootloader menu while on others, i cannot see it at all, the terminal goes grey right after information about network card. I access AMT "bios" through ctrl + e. If I use a terminal only linux remote boot from cd, the screen is always just black, there is no redirection (again I am not using graphical interface but rather terminal).

5. In some of those videos, it is shown that after pressing ` one can even browse directory structure if the computer is powered up. Again it does not work in my case.

All the points above suggest that AMT in my case is not working as it should be. I assume, I am missing something. What would that be?

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Gael_H_Intel
Moderator
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I am sorry for the delay - I am forwarding this on to the Commander owner.

-Gael

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Ylian_S_Intel
Employee
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Hi. I am the "Commander owner"... but also go by many other names. These are all great questions, I will do my best to cover everything.

1. out of the 2 tools you mention, Intel Setup & Configuration (SCS) is really an Intel tool, the other Commander is an open source tool that I have worked on for a long time. SCS is coming out with new versions, as for Commander, I am working on a full replacement for it that is completely web based: "Manageability Commander Web Edition", it's on the same site here: http://opentools.homeip.net/open-manageability/web-management. One of the things we are doing is moving to web based development in the future, we want Intel AMT management features to be fully available from a web site you can setup or from the Internet. Plenty of other tools around, but Commander and Meshcentral is what I work on. By the way, the Intel AMT SDK is also a big Intel package (but not really a tool).

2. I have not written a lot, but I have many piles of YouTube videos... I have a playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHWh6VG8roU&list=PLWeHC-v5uwvswDHcffCt96doUQM5IC0Zk. Going forward, you will see more document as part of the web version of Commander.

3. Intel AMT discovery is something we are working to improve. Commander can scan a range of IP addresses to try to find Intel AMT machines, or it can use Mesh. To make Mesh work, you need to use Meshcentral.com or setup your own mesh server.

4. Serial-over-LAN terminal will send data to a virtual serial port on the Intel AMT computer. If you have no software using this port, it will not show anything. You can boot to BIOS with Serial-over-LAN turned on and the BIOS will send a text version of the BIOS into the serial port. You can using "Outpost" that comes in the same package as Commander to make a command prompt show up in Windows on Serial-over-Lan or use the Meshcentral agent.

5. Browsing directory structure over serial-over-lan requires that "Output" be running on the Intel AMT machines. Commander is the console tool and Output is the agent tool. Try running Outpost and it should start to work.

Hope it helps,
Ylian

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