Currently only PCs from Kontron are used.

When ordering, make sure you get a backplane with true PCIe x4 performance which is needed for Pexor, Kinpex and Pexaria cards.

Kontron KISS industrial PCs feature Intel's Active Management Technology AMT.
AMT allows to perform defined actions of the device via LAN (Power Up, Power Down, Power Cycle, Reset).
Furthermore, it provides a virtual, OS-independent serial port which can also be accessed via LAN.
This feature is called Serial-over-LAN (SOL) and is typically used to redirect the boot console.

amtterm and amttool are POSIX command-line programs to access the remote AMT features.
Usage of amtterm to connect to SOL boot consoles is straightforward.
In case you get a “connection refused”, check the BIOS/ME settings below.

BIOS Settings (press <DEL> at boot screen)

• → Advanced
  • → Remote Access Configuration:
    • Remote Access [Disabled]
  • → Intel AMT Configuration:
    • Intel AMT Support [Enable]
    • Unconfigure AMT [Disabled]

ME Settings (press <CTRL-P> after boot screen)

• → Intel(R) ME General Settings
  • → Network Setup → Intel(R) ME Network Name Settings
    • → Host Name
      • sddsc012 (e.g.)
    • → Domain Name
      • acc.gsi.de
    • → Shared/Dedicated FQDN
      • [*] DEDICATED
    • → Activate Network Access
• → Intel(R) AMT Configuration
  • → SOL/IDER
    • → Redirection Mode
      • [*] ENABLED

Redirection of the Linux boot console is configured via the kernel append syntax.

console=ttyS2,115200n8

Here, the virtual SOL serial port is ttyS2. It is the next higher number than the highest physically available serial port of the machine.
Hence, the numbering of the virtual SOL serial port may differ for other devices.
If you don't know the exact serial device, a good shot is the ttyS with the highest number.

dmesg | sed -n 's/.*\(ttyS[0-9]\+\).*/\1/p' | sort | tail -1