Enabling KVM via VNC access on the Intel NUC and other hurdles

While setting up my new NUCs to use with MAAS as a development deployment tool, I got very, very frustrated with the initial experience so I thought I’d write up some key things here so that others may benefit — especially if you are using MAAS.

First hurdle — when you hit ctrl-P at the boot screen it is likely to not work. This is because you need to disable the num lock.

Second hurdle — when you go and enable the AMT features it asks for a new password, but doesn’t tell you that it needs to contain upper case, lower case, numbers AND punctuation.

Third hurdle — if you want to use it headless like me, it’s a good idea to enable the VNC server.  You can do that with this script:

AMT_PASSWORD=<fill me in>
VNC_PASSWORD=<fill me in>
IP=N.N.N.N

wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h ${IP} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k RFBPassword=${VNC_PASSWORD} &&\
 wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h ${IP} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k Is5900PortEnabled=true &&\
 wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h ${IP} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k OptInPolicy=false &&\
 wsman put http://intel.com/wbem/wscim/1/ips-schema/1/IPS_KVMRedirectionSettingData -h ${IP} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k SessionTimeout=0 &&\
 wsman invoke -a RequestStateChange http://schemas.dmtf.org/wbem/wscim/1/cim-schema/2/CIM_KVMRedirectionSAP -h ${IP} -P 16992 -u admin -p ${AMT_PASSWORD} -k RequestedState=2

(wsman comes from the wsmancli package)

But there is yet another gotcha!  The VNC_PASSWORD must be no more than 8 characters and still meet the same requirements as the AMT password.

Once this is all done you should be all set to use this very fast machine with MAAS.