Setting up IPMI and Serial Over LAN on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4

Table of Contents
1. Setting Up IPMI ........................................................................................................................................................2 1.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................2 1.2. Pre-requisites ..................................................................................................................................................2 1.3. Denitions ......................................................................................................................................................2 1.4. Building and Installing ipmi...........................................................................................................................2 1.5. Testing the Installation ...................................................................................................................................3 1.6. Setting IPMI to Start at Boot..........................................................................................................................3 2. Setting up Serial Over LAN .....................................................................................................................................4 2.1. BIOS settings..................................................................................................................................................4 2.2. Kernel Console Setup.....................................................................................................................................4 2.3. Setting up Login Permissions.........................................................................................................................4 2.4. Adding agetty to /etc/inttab ............................................................................................................................4 2.5. Discard Port 623/UDP....................................................................................................................................5 2.6. Activating SOL in ipmitool ............................................................................................................................5

1. Setting Up IPMI
1.1. Introduction
This document outlines the installation and setup of IPMI and console redirection as well as serial login using IPMI Serial Over LAN.

1.2. Pre-requisites
You must have a machine that supports IPMI. If you have any questions about the compatibility of your hardware with IPMI please contact Penguin Computing Technical Support. You must have ipmitool version 1.8.3 minimum (http://ipmitool.sf.net) and Sol_Cong.sh (available from Penguin Computing Technical Support.) The example in this document uses ipmitool version 1.8.6, available from the ipmitool project page or from Penguin Computing Technical Support.

1.3. Denitions
IPMI Intelligent Platform Management Interface or IPMI is an open standard designed to Enable remote monitoring and control of the server platform. The IPMI specication was originally proposed in 1998 and is now mainstream.

BMC The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) is the small processor embedded into the server platform. It operates independently of the host processor in order to extend the systems management. The BMC provides remote power reset, sensor monitoring and event handling.

1.4. Building and Installing ipmi

1. Download ipmitool-1.8.6.tar.gz from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool 2. Build and Install ipmitool ./congure --prex=/usr make sudo make install

Setting up IPMI and Serial Over LAN on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4

3. Load the IPMI Modules For RHEL 3 (2.4 kernel) modprobe ipmi_kcs_drv modprobe ipmi_devintf For RHEL 4 (2.6 kernel) modprobe ipmi_si modprobe ipmi_devintf

4. Create the IPMI Device mknod /dev/ipmi0 c cat /proc/devices | grep ipmidev | awk {print $1} 0 To congure you server for ipmi and serial over LAN you should run SolCong.sh ./SolCong.sh -A eth0

1.5. Testing the Installation

At this point, ipmi is congured on your machine. You can verify this with the following command (just hit enter when the password prompt appears.) ipmitool -I lan -H targetHostIp sensor Verify the settings with the command ipmitool lan print 6. You should be able to connect to it from another machine using ipmitool (hit enter when the password prompt appears.) ipmitool -I lan -H targetHostIp sensor

1.6. Setting IPMI to Start at Boot

To these modules at boot, you will need to grab this le: ipmitool/contrib/ipmi.init.basic and copy it to /etc/init.d/. Next make a symbolic link to start it in the /etc/rc runlevel directory that you boot into. Run level 5 is used in this example. cd /etc/rc5.d/ ln -s ../init.d/ipmi.init.basic S98ipmi Assuming youve congured the target host for serial login (described below) you should be able to use IPMI Serial Over LAN. ipmitool -I lanplus -H targetHostIp -C0 sol activate congure the system to load

Setting up IPMI and Serial Over LAN on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4

Warning
Dont try to use ipmitool directly to set the network conguration. Some versions pause before actually applying changes and if you set multiple things at once you can put the BMC in an undened state. For best results use the Sol_Config.sh script instead. If it is necessary to reset the BMC, unplug the system for 10 seconds.

2. Setting up Serial Over LAN

2.1. BIOS settings
You must have console redirection enabled in the BIOS.
Terminal Emulation : vt100 Serial Settings : 9600 8,n,1

2.2. Kernel Console Setup

Under the following lines in your /etc/grub.conf le:
#boot=/dev/sda default=0 timeout=10

Add these lines:

serial --unit=0 ---speed=9600 (--unit=0 corresponds to the serial port number) terminal --timeout=0 serial

Remove or comment out the line :

splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

Append the following to any "kernel" lines. The ttyS0 value should match your Console Serial Device attribute value:
console=ttyS0,9600n8 console=tty0

2.3. Setting up Login Permissions

Add /dev/ttyS0 to the /etc/securetty. echo "/dev/ttyS0" >> /etc/securetty

Setting up IPMI and Serial Over LAN on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4

2.4. Adding agetty to /etc/inttab

In the section labeled Run gettys in standard runlevels add
7:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 9600

This causes init to run an agetty on the ttyS0 port at 9600 baud.

2.5. Discard Port 623/UDP

If you intend to congure the BMC to listen to the same IP address as the host operating system You must congure xinetd to discard port 623 UDP to prevent ipmitool in SOL mode from dropping the connection. This is accomplished by creating this le in the /etc/xinetd.d/discard.
service discard { type id socket_type protocol user wait disable port }

= = = = = = = =

INTERNAL UNLISTED discard-dgram dgram udp root yes no 623

This is not necessary if you choose to create a separate management network.

2.6. Activating SOL in ipmitool

In order to open a serial connection in ipmitool you must run this command : ipmitool -I lanplus -H targetHostIp -C0 sol activate -I signies the lanplus interface, this is the IPMIv2 activation. -H is the IP address of the target machine. -C0 signies Cypher Suite 0. This is the Encryption Mode sol activate starts the Serial Over Lan terminal. You should see this:
[user@local ~]$ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.1.212 -C0 sol activate Password: (Password is blank. Just hit "enter") [SOL Session operational. Use ~? for help] ? Login incorrect login:

You cannot log in as root. You must log in as a normal user (so be sure to create one).

Setting up IPMI and Serial Over LAN on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4
Important Things to Consider: SOL is handled by the NIC and BMC. If you are connected to the console through SOL and the kernel panics you will see the panic output (assuming that youve congured the kernel to display messages to the serial port). The OS need not be on for IPMI to work. You can send the machine a command to power on/off and attach to the console to see the machine come up and log in if its been congured to do so. If you have congured everything properly and double checked your settings and you get this error when you try to connect:
Error: Unable to establish LAN session Get Device ID command failed Unable to open SDR for reading

It is possible that your BMC or rmware is out of date. Please contact Penguin Computing Technical Support for the latest rmware. You will need to have access to a USB key that you can install freedos on.