Booting Process Profiling Tool for Baseboard Management Controllers

Abstract

Baseboard Management Controller(BMC) supports server monitoring, maintenance, and control functions using various communication interfaces. However, if an unexpected problem occurs during the device driver initialization process, the BMC may not operate normally. Therefore, a boot process profiling tool that accurately analyzes the device driver initialization process and provides a function to check the analysis result is essential. Existing boot process profiling tools do not specifically provide the device driver initialization process and results required for BMC boot process analysis, forcing developers to use a combination of tools to analyze the boot process in detail. In this paper, we propose an integrated profiling tool for BMC's booting process. The proposed tool provides device driver initialization process analysis, CPU and memory usage analysis, and kernel version management functions. Users can easily analyze the booting process using the proposed tool, and the analysis result can be used to shorten the booting time. Also, the proposed tool is implemented in Linux-based BMC, and it is shown that the proposed tool is more efficient than the existing profiling tool.