Bare-Metal — FreeBSD operator notes

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Practical notes for testing Clawdie images on physical hardware (HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8). The Linux agent owns the comprehensive bare-metal-server-management skill — this page covers FreeBSD-specific gaps: tools, image boot quirks, and what the build host needs to seed for headless operation.

Hardware summary

Property	Value
Model	HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8
CPU	2× Xeon E5-2620 (Sandy Bridge-EP, 6c/12t each, 2.0 GHz) — AVX1 only, no AVX2/FMA/BMI2/F16C
RAM	36 GB installed, ~12 GB usable under legacy BIOS (MMIO hole)
Management	iLO 4 (192.168.1.2, dedicated NIC)
iLO license	Check: `show /map1/oemhp_license1` — need iLO Advanced for virtual media
Boot medium	USB stick (rear port) or iLO virtual CD-ROM
Scratch disk	`da0` (279 GB, reformattable)
Current role	Verify(4) target — boots Clawdie live USB, tests seed PIN + pi

Capability profile (for hive routing)

This node’s hardware limits what local models it can serve. The runtime-inventory probe records these facts so the hive router can decide: send the task here (local, fast, zero API cost) or to the cloud (slower, costs tokens, better model).

Capability	Value	Implication
CPU SIMD	AVX1 only (no AVX2, FMA, BMI2, F16C)	llama.cpp needs source build with SIMD flags off
Usable RAM	~12 GB	Largest loadable model: 14B Q5_K_M (10.5 GB)
14B inference	~1 tok/s generation, ~430 ms/tok prompt	Async/batch only — NOT interactive. 200-tok reasoning = 3+ min wall
8B inference	~1.8 tok/s gen, ~200 ms/tok prompt (measured)	Async agent loops, classification. Still not interactive on this CPU
Disk (scratch)	279 GB on `da0`	Model cache: one 14B + embeddings
GPU	Matrox G200 (iLO, no compute)	CPU-only inference only
NIC	1 Gbps	Model download ~70 min for 10 GB

Router rule: valhala advertises embeddings + batch classification + async code review. Embeddings are a single forward pass (fast); classification is short-output; code review runs at ~1 tok/s with 1024+ token budgets (~16 min per review). The 14B’s reasoning quality is correct on real Colibri code (validated on Rust borrow-checker analysis) — latency is the cost, not accuracy. Prose generation (summarization, interactive reasoning) routes to cloud.

llama-cpp covers the full install + model selection guide, including the Sandy Bridge build flags.

Two paths to the hardware

The live USB can reach the ML350p’s BMC through two channels. Both are password-authenticated — SSH keys are impractical to provision per-iLO on a throwaway USB stick.

Path	Tool	How	When
IPMI LAN+	`ipmitool`	`ipmitool -H 192.168.1.2 -U Administrator -E sensor`	First choice — standard, gives telemetry in one command
SSH SMASH	`ssh` + `sshpass`	`sshpass -e ssh $KEX Administrator@192.168.1.2 "show /system1"`	Fallback — IPMI-over-LAN is often disabled by default on iLO for security

Try IPMI first. If it’s off (common on factory-default iLO 4), SSH SMASH is always available and gives the same data through a different protocol.

ipmitool — IPMI LAN+ (preferred path)

ipmitool (sysutils/ipmitool) is already in the package list. Use -E (reads IPMI_PASSWORD from the environment) instead of -P <pw> — keeps the password out of ps argv and shell history.

export IPMI_PASSWORD="<redacted>"

# Sensor reading (temperature, fans, voltages)
ipmitool -H 192.168.1.2 -U Administrator -E sensor

# Power control
ipmitool -H 192.168.1.2 -U Administrator -E power status
ipmitool -H 192.168.1.2 -U Administrator -E power on

# Set one-time PXE boot
ipmitool -H 192.168.1.2 -U Administrator -E chassis bootdev pxe

sshpass — SSH SMASH (reliable fallback)

sshpass (security/sshpass, added 04.jul.2026) provides non-interactive password auth for iLO SMASH/SSH. Use -e (reads SSHPASS from the environment) or -f <file> (mode 0600) — never -p <password> which exposes the password in ps argv to any local user.

export SSHPASS="<redacted>"
KEX="-o KexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group14-sha1 -o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa"

# System overview
sshpass -e ssh $KEX Administrator@192.168.1.2 "show /system1"

# IML log (most recent entry)
sshpass -e ssh $KEX Administrator@192.168.1.2 "show /system1/log1/record1"

iLO 4 needs the legacy KEX algorithms — without them SSH fails outright.

Image boot quirks (FreeBSD on HP Gen8)

USB boot

The Clawdie .img is a raw disk image, not ISO 9660. Write it to a USB stick with dd:

# FreeBSD
xz -dc clawdie-quindecim-<version>.img.xz | dd of=/dev/da0 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync && sync

# Linux
xz -dc clawdie-quindecim-<version>.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync && sync

iLO virtual media — CD-ROM only, never floppy

iLO 4 virtual media supports two emulation types:

Command	Emulates	Max size	Use for
`vm cdrom insert <url>`	DVD-ROM	~4.7 GB	ISO 9660 images — this is what you want
`vm floppy insert <url>`	Floppy	~1.44 MB	Tiny payloads — will crash on large images

Presenting a raw .img (28 GB) as a floppy causes a BIOS boot loop. Always use vm cdrom and an ISO 9660 image. The Clawdie .img is NOT ISO 9660 — it must boot from USB, not iLO virtual media.

BIOS boot order

F11 during POST → Boot Menu. The ML350p Gen8 remembers the last boot device. If it won’t boot from USB, enter BIOS setup (F9) and check:

USB Boot Support: Enabled
Boot Order: USB Key before HDD

Requirements for next ISO build

Package	Port	Size	Status
`ipmitool`	`sysutils/ipmitool`	~1.5 MB	Already in `pkg-list-live-operator.txt:93`
`sshpass`	`security/sshpass`	~50 KB	Added `feat/add-sshpass`, pending merge

iLO credentials on the seed partition (future)

The seed partition could carry iLO credentials (IP + password) alongside provider keys, enabling the booted USB to auto-detect and manage its host hardware:

# seed/env addition (future)
ILO_HOST=192.168.1.2
ILO_USER=Administrator
ILO_PASS=<redacted>

This is a follow-up task — not needed for Verify(4) which uses manual iLO access from a separate machine.

TODO for next img build

ipmitool in package list ✓ (already present)
sshpass in package list ✓ (feat/add-sshpass, pending merge)
Verify ipmitool sensor readout from booted USB on ML350p
Verify iLO reachability from live USB (same subnet? DHCP on management NIC?)
Cross-link from clawdie-iso-build skill ✓ (04.jul.2026)