The ipmitool utility on Linux systems is widely-used for controlling IPMI-enabled servers and other systems. This tool for interacting with the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is extremely common with server administrators while now its development is in a temporary state of limbo due to GitHub.
Those navigating to ipmitool/ipmitool on GitHub as the official repository for this project will find that it’s now in a “public archive” state. Thus immediately comes to mind did development end on this important Linux server tool? The GitHub repository makes no mentions of what happened or plans.
Phoronix reader Jordan reached out to note that the developer maintaining the project has been suspended by GitHub without warning. He found a message on the old IPMItool SourceForge project area from Alexander Amelkin, who has been maintaining ipmitool since 2018:
“Sorry to say, but on March 1st without any prior notice or any explanation whatsoever, GitHub has suspended my personal account and made orphan all the projects that I owned / maintained.
That includes ipmitool and frugen.
This mailing list and the old sourceforge project page are the only means of communication with you that I have left. I am currently searching for a way to unblock my GitHub or (less preferably) migrate ipmitool once again to another less hostile service.
Thank you.
Sincerely, Alexander Amelkin”
Two weeks after this apparent user block and archiving of all the open-source projects he maintains, there is no apparent resolution. The ipmitool project itself is at a standstill. There is no clear indication why GitHub blocked Amelkin but may have to do with him being based out of Moscow, Russia as his repositories do not appear otherwise controversial.
In any event, just writing about this here briefly to draw attention to the issue of ipmitool being blocked/archived, its repository/home may change going forward if remaining blocked by GitHub, and to help clarify for anyone else thinking that ipmitool development may have otherwise stalled/abandoned.
