has anyone successfully used the serial-over-lan feature in ipmitool?

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has anyone successfully used the serial-over-lan feature in ipmitool?

The IPMI hardware in Apple's Intel Xserves ostensibly supports serial-over-LAN access via ipmitool. Attempting to access it with ipmitool doesn't appear to work, however; the command

ipmitool -H hostname -U username sol activate

simply returns without entering a serial session. I am able to perform other queries on the same interface with ipmitool, however. Is there some setting that I must enable in order to permit the above command to succeed?

Intel Xserve, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Nov 12, 2008 5:28 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 12, 2008 8:13 AM in response to alfarabi

Leopard 10.5.5 [ipmitool works|http://64.223.189.234/node/976] (ipmitool -V shows the ipmitool version 2.0.2), though with a bug that's been previously reported to Apple. Try resetting the LOM with sol deactivate, and power-cycling (unplugging) the box to reset the LOM, and make sure Server Monitor can get at the LOM, and make sure you're using the LOM IP address and not the host IP address.

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Answer 2

alfarabi Author

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Nov 12, 2008 10:40 AM in response to MrHoffman

I tried resetting the LOM as described and unplugging the machine for a minute before rebooting, but did not observe any change of behavior; ipmitool immediately returns without starting up a serial connection after I enter my password. I am indeed connecting to the LOM interface rather than the host IP; after all, I can run other ipmitool queries against that interface successfully.

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Answer 3

Nov 12, 2008 11:17 AM in response to alfarabi

Which version ipmitool? (Do you have the current 10.5.5 Server Tools kit installed?)

Is the Xserve box current on its firmware?

Does something akin to the following work?

ipmitool -U lomusr -P lompwd -H w.x.y.z bmc info

Has anybody been working within /dev or with the device configuration in general?

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Answer 4

alfarabi Author

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Nov 12, 2008 12:33 PM in response to MrHoffman

I have version 2.0.2 installed. The firmware is not up to date (its boot ROM is at version XS11.0080.B01); however, I never was able to figure out how to update it (see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1569860&tstart=0). Querying the bmc info with ipmitool does work; it reports firmware revision 1.2.8. No manual changes were made within /dev to my knowledge.

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Answer 5

Nov 12, 2008 1:51 PM in response to alfarabi

I don't recall the 2006-vintage Xserve needing that firmware update; the 2006 boxes I deal with are (also) running 1.2.8.

if you ps -A on the target system, is there anything showing up on tty.serial? (does something else have the port?) (that seems unlikely here given the reboot, though I could see some host application grabbing the serial port for some task.) (A remote connection here via ipmitool shows that as the device.)

If that's not it, I'm out of ideas.

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Answer 6

alfarabi Author

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Nov 12, 2008 5:22 PM in response to MrHoffman

All I see is

getty serial.57600 tty.serial

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Answer 7

Nov 13, 2008 11:08 AM in response to alfarabi

Odd. Some process is active on the serial port? Is the physical console port hard-wired somewhere?

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Answer 8

alfarabi Author

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Nov 13, 2008 5:02 PM in response to MrHoffman

No; the serial console port is not attached to anything. Isn't it normal for getty to run against the serial console, though? (Other Unix flavors - e.g., Solaris, Linux - typically run a console monitoring daemon on their serial ports.)

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Answer 9

Nov 13, 2008 5:37 PM in response to alfarabi

Twas looking in another column; in the TTY column of the ps -A output.
Can you log in over the serial port directly?
Anyway; I'm out of ideas. (And it works fine here.)

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